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I would like to make a trip to Costco and verify that a desktop can boot from 16.04 & 18.04 before purchasing the machine. Although a link is provide to the target PC, I expect that there may be other candidates, so a robust and well thought out test plan is needed. The plan is to bring bootable USB sticks and run Ubuntu (not install) on the demo machine.

My machines pre-date UEFI and I am wondering if I need to be prepared for any obstacles UEFI may present to performing the test. If secure boot could prevent USB booting, then I will need to learn the general steps required to work around this issue.

QUESTIONS

  • What obstacles, if any, does UEFI present to the plan to verify Ubuntu runs on the PC?

  • Does turning off UEFI and defaulting to a BIOS solve the problem?

gatorback
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    back in the day, uefi was a serious pain... now it pretty much works without a hitch. just make sure you know how to edit your boot parameters in case you need to add nomodeset or acpi=off for it to boot the basic system (likely if you have a nice video card) – Joshua Besneatte Aug 27 '18 at 20:43
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    What brand/model desktop. Someone may have identical or very similar system and know if it works. Almost all systems work with Ubuntu, but some need updates to UEFI or SSD firmware and/or boot parameters. – oldfred Aug 27 '18 at 21:01
  • OP updated to address questions and clarify OP. Responses prescribing actions should consider posting responses as answers – gatorback Aug 27 '18 at 21:13

1 Answers1

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I don't know about anything specifically UEFI related that would foil your plan as long as you create an UEFI ready Live USB.

Changing to Legacy/BIOS mode in the UEFI should work too.

In all the machines I have installed Ubuntu in the recent years, secure boot has not posed any problem booting from the Live USB.

Your main problem may be to get to the UEFI setup menu of the demo computer. In particular, "fast boot" may be enabled in the UEFI. In this case, the system boots to Windows without any UEFI/BIOS setup access prompt such as:

  • Press F2 to enter UEFI setup,
  • Press F10 to select an a different boot drive.

In these cases you have to restart Windows in a special way.

Step 1: Insert the Live USB drive while Windows is running

Step 2: SHIFT Restart

In Windows go to the power off options and while holding the SHIFT key, click on Restart.

enter image description here

I am not sure if you will be asked for Admin password to go beyond this point.

You will see a different Restart Menu:

enter image description here

Option A: Try to boot from the USB

Option B: Access UEFI setup

This will only work if the demo machine does not have UEFI password set.

Select Troubleshoot from the above picture followed by UEFI Firmware Settings below:

enter image description here

The system will reboot and you will be allowed to go to the UEFI setup.

If you do succeed please answer your question and let us know how it goes.

Sources:

How do I install Ubuntu alongside a pre-installed Windows with UEFI?

How to Boot from USB Drive in Windows 10

Hope this helps

user68186
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