Resolved Won't work on a Dell Vostro 3670

[pmikep]

I have removed my content

 

[DarkwinX]

IIRC, the message that I got then was that SpinRite needed DOS.

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"?

P.P.S. It seems that the next logical step for ReadSpeed would be to have it test every percent of a drive. Essentially running SpinRite F2.

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 .

 

[PHolder]

Well these pages imply it COULD do legacy boot, but I have my doubts that it actually can:

Dell Vostro 3670 Setup and specifications guide | Dell Canada

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...

 

[pmikep]

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[DarkwinX]

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.

https://forums.grc.com/threads/easiest-way-to-bios-on-win-10.310/#post-2477

I've never tried it this way but it might be the simplest approach.

 

[pmikep]

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[DarkwinX]

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.

And even tho the BIOS says it can't boot Win8, I can boot Win8.1 from SD. IIRC, I used RUFUS to burn a GPT and UEFI.

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?

 

[pmikep]

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[Steve]

As an alternative to DOS, I wonder if SpinRite can do its thing via Linux? (Since programs like Acronis, GParted can.)

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.

 

[pmikep]

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[Steve]

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."

 

[pmikep]

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[DarkwinX]

@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.

These specific systems are based on the 7th generation Kaby lake processor (and above) and are designed to boot exclusively in the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot environment. As a result, if legacy boot mode is selected, the system will not boot.

No boot device found when you change the Boot sequence to Legacy mode | Dell Australia

 

[pmikep]

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[PHolder]

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.

 

[PHolder]

That does pose an interesting question for @Steve thou. The BIOS is just software, right? Granted it's software that normally comes preloaded into a PC's ROM... but in theory you could use UEFI to load a BIOS image into memory, mark it as read and execute only, and jump to it... no?

 

[DarkwinX]

Were there 'BIOS' work-arounds in other motherboards to get around Intel?

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.

 

[pmikep]

I have removed my content

 

[Barry Wallis]

@DarkwinX Microsoft Surface Books have never supported Legacy Boot.

 

[Steve]

That does pose an interesting question for @Steve thou. The BIOS is just software, right? Granted it's software that normally comes preloaded into a PC's ROM... but in theory you could use UEFI to load a BIOS image into memory, mark it as read and execute only, and jump to it... no?

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.