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Resolved Won't work on a Dell Vostro 3670
- Thread starter pmikep
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Sounds like this Dell only supports UEFI booting for O/S and USB. Is there anywhere in the bios that enables "legacy" boot or "CSM"?
At the end of the day if we were testing each and every bit on the drive we would just use SpinRite 6.1 when the ReadSpeed drivers are migrates into the code
.Well these pages imply it COULD do legacy boot, but I have my doubts that it actually can:
You would need see what shows up in "F12 Boot Menu" and mess with the settings. They say "Legacy External Devices" so there seems to be hope...
You would need see what shows up in "F12 Boot Menu" and mess with the settings. They say "Legacy External Devices" so there seems to be hope...
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pmikep
Guest
Hmm interesting. Unless it can boot DOS/legacy only operating systems it sounds like it will have to wait for UEFI support.
By any chance did you catch this post about clearing secure boot keys?
I've had to clear them when they were enabled to boot legacy. Be careful though, this could trigger some boot failures depending on whether you have Bitlocker or something else relying on secure boot.
I've never tried it this way but it might be the simplest approach.
By any chance did you catch this post about clearing secure boot keys?
I've had to clear them when they were enabled to boot legacy. Be careful though, this could trigger some boot failures depending on whether you have Bitlocker or something else relying on secure boot.
I've never tried it this way but it might be the simplest approach.
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pmikep
Guest
Unfortunately not as it was only designed to run under dos at the moment since that's how SpinRite 6 and 6.1 (will) run.
Just to rule out an issue with the disk initialisation part of ReadSpeed, can you try using Rufus to setup a FreeDOS USB? It should be in the drop down menu. Does that boot?
Just to rule out an issue with the disk initialisation part of ReadSpeed, can you try using Rufus to setup a FreeDOS USB? It should be in the drop down menu. Does that boot?
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pmikep
Guest
I'm headed there as quickly as possible, for exactly the reason that you're having this trouble. I'm prioritizing it before adding native USB and NVMe drivers since we're going to be needing this anyway. In the future we'll be secure boot compatible and won't be using DOS at all... so we'll work under BIOS or UEFI.
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pmikep
Guest
The FreeDOS folks have declared that they will never be supporting UEFI. That's a shame, since SO MUCH WORK has gone into the FreeDOS project over the years, and refusing to support UEFI means that it will ultimately be unusable. But then, they are a crusty old bunch. If they DO make FreeDOS run under UEFI -- I seem to recall that there's a UEFI/BIOS translation layer somewhere -- that would allow me to shift my priorities and work on native driver support instead. But, again, the FreeDOS folks have been VERY clear about... "Nope, never."
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pmikep
Guest
@pmikep looks like even though the options are there Dell has blamed the processors from Kaby Lake onwards only being designed for UEFI ... so it looks like legacy booting just does not work at all. Even though the article doesn't specifically mention your model it sounds like this might apply to all Dells.
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pmikep
Guest
Intel controls the chipset in the Wintel side of things... and they have decreed that it's UEFI booting only starting in 2020 and from 2021 onward. Like it or not, the BIOS is going to die. Keep your older machines working for as long as you can, but don't expect anything new to support BIOS from now on.
In this case I think Dell is just trying to push the industry into UEFI faster... I know that my 10th Gen CPU and motherboard support legacy bios through the CSM so it really depends on the manufacturer until Intel actually stop supporting it in hardware.
HP also still support it on some models.
@PHolder I also had a similar line of thought the other day in that it's probably possible to build an emulator for BIOS that runs on UEFI. It might make for another great piece of freeware.
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pmikep
Guest
That's certainly a possibility. And a BIOS already exists for doing exactly that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaBIOS
https://www.seabios.org/SeaBIOS
Tucked in among the features, it says: “SeaBIOS as a Compatibility Support Module (CSM) for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and Open Virtual Machine Firmware (OVMF)”.
If it turns out that SeaBIOS can be made to function as a practical and fully machine-independent CSM without lots of gotcha's, and that FreeDOS will run on top of it, then that might provide a relatively fast and pain free solution.
