New UEFI install.

[Charlie Brown]

I remember just now that it does it according to uefi setting (again, if I'm not wrong).. whether it's set to uefi or legacy (or it's just Bios) .. gpt/mbr ...

[FullScale4Me]

This Dell once had Windows 10 on it and likely Secure Boot, SATA Controller Mode and possibly Boot Order were changed to allow that MX installation in MBR mode.

The 'Enable Legacy Option ROM' was likely enabled, needed for MBR Boot Mode. My best practice recommendation is it should be disabled prior to attempting the UEFI install.

Why?

Many PCs with the 'Enable Legacy Option ROM' on/enabled will boot in UEFI [from a UEFI boot USB] and the MX Installer will detect the UEFI boot. If however the UEFI boot fails, many PCs use the 'Legacy Option' [aka CSM] as a fallback and then boot MBR Mode. The boot error may or may not flash onscreen just before MBR boot up commences. The MX Installer will detect the boot was MBR and install as such.

See page 40 to page 46 here - https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/latitude-e7270-ultrabook_owners-manual_en-us.pdf

Changing the creation of the MX Boot USB to GPT Mode is usually sufficient to get past the 'Legacy Option ROMs' being on/enabled for business grade Dell PCs. Other Dell PCs still OK to not so much.

As always the PC firmware is programmed by a human and their interpretation of the UEFI spec has been shown to vary. I've seen it in person with one of my Dell PCs (TPM was off or 1.2 only). A BIOS update flash did fix it BTW (TMP was then off/1.2/2.0).

[maximus linuxos]

I tried the uefi install and i got a black screen saying there were no bootable devices found..Not certain my laptop is uefi compliant....i changed the settings in the bios and nothing happened.It is possible i may have missed a bios setting..i am not familiar with this bios approach.

[MXRobo]

For me, setting the esp and boot flags in the ESP partition is easy to forget with Gparted.
Only one of these is required for linux (maybe esp, and boot for windows) or I transposed these requirements, but enabling both flags are fine, in fact some installers and/or Gparted fill in both when you select one of them.

Obviously as others have said, disable secure boot, and I forget, maybe change SATA to achi in bios, or do I have that reversed – anyway someone will read this and correct it.

And don't be afraid of experimenting with Gparted and custom installation, perhaps later installing a separate Data partition.
Gparted is solid, View → device information. Many find it easier to use Gparted first, then install.

++EDIT without reading the entire post, did you create an ESP partition? 100 MiB to 1 GiB Huge, maybe a few hundred or 0.5 GiB, it's normally the first partition. Maybe you don't need to create this manually with an auto-install as it would probably create it for you - I've never done an auto-install.

Good Luck

[fehlix]

I tried the uefi install and i got a black screen saying there were no bootable devices found..Not certain my laptop is uefi compliant....i changed the settings in the bios and nothing happened.It is possible i may have missed a bios setting..i am not familiar with this bios approach.

Maybe post QSI from Live booted system, but re-enable UEFI first.
also post efi entries as listed by this:
Open terminal and run:

Code: Select all

efibootmgr -v

and wrap the terminal text shown into code brackets like those [code] here [/code] by using [</>] button.