UEFI boot

[Thue]

I just spent 1 hour with a Toshiba laptop, wondering why I could not make it boot any USB drives or CDs. It turns out that it was set to UEFI Boot instead of CSM Boot in the BIOS. Trying to boot UBCD resulted in a "boot failed" message being shown for 1/5 of a second, before it went on to boot the harddisk.

I noted that SystemRescueCD was able to boot both UEFI and UBCD. So it seems to be possible.

It would have been IMMENSELY helpful if UBCD had included some kind of UEFI boot. Even if for some reason, the DOS tools can't run from a UEFI boot, you could still display a message saying "You booted in UEFI. Change your bios to boot CSM instead", instead of boot just failing. When debugging why UBCD isn't working, you need error messages; would have saved me much time .

And the Linux distribution included in UBCD could still easily boot from UEFI, I assume.

[Victor Chew]

I noted that SystemRescueCD was able to boot both UEFI and UBCD. So it seems to be possible.

Did you mean both UEFI and *BIOS*? SystemRescueCD uses grub2, which lets it boot under both UEFI and legacy mode. We could do the same for UBCD, but as discussed elsewhere in the forum, there seems to be no benefit of doing so due to the legacy nature of tools included in UBCD.

Even if for some reason, the DOS tools can't run from a UEFI boot, you could still display a message saying "You booted in UEFI. Change your bios to boot CSM instead", instead of boot just failing.

This is technically not possible, because the "boot failed" message you are seeing is coming from the UEFI firmware, before it has even reached the UBCD bootloader. The UEFI firmware expects a certain disk stucture on its boot media, and when it doesn't find it, it fails and moves on to the next. How it chooses to relay such failures to the user is entirely up to the firmware.

[ady]

What you are suggesting is not that simple as you would think.

Additionally, the tools included in UBCD are not prepared to run in UEFI mode (not even the Linux distro included).

In practice, booting in UEFI mode is not as straightforward as the theory claims it is. Then, every time it fails, users would expect some kind of support, explanations and improvements, while adding more and more MB to UBCD.

All that work just so a simple message can be displayed?

Instead, I would suggest adding a simple very minimal note in the download page, and perhaps in some "readme" file (or similar) in the next ISO image. Moreover, the file itself could be named as "NOT4UEFI" or "UEFI", with ".TXT" as (optional?) filename extension ("8.3" naming format, compatible with ISO9660 and with DOS).

[Thue]

In practice, booting in UEFI mode is not as straightforward as the theory claims it is. Then, every time it fails, users would expect some kind of support, explanations and improvements, while adding more and more MB to UBCD.

If it failed, the users would be in the exact same situation as they are today. UBCD does not work, and no helpful error message. Even an UEFI implementation in UBCD which only worked 90% of the time would be purely beneficial.

All that work just so a simple message can be displayed?

You can't measure the benefit from a "simple message" in the right place, just by saying that the message is simple or short. The benefit could be hours of lost time trying to figure out why UBCD is not booting.

As an analogy, consider removing the "simple" error messages from the Unix cp command, making cp fail silently when something goes wrong. Just because those error messages are simple, doesn't mean that having them is meaningless.

Instead, I would suggest adding a simple very minimal note in the download page, and perhaps in some "readme" file (or similar) in the next ISO image. Moreover, the file itself could be named as "NOT4UEFI" or "UEFI", with ".TXT" as (optional?) filename extension ("8.3" naming format, compatible with ISO9660 and with DOS).

Many people will not read this. Though you can of course then say RTFM, it is still obviously inferior to having the error message displayed in the right place.

[ady]

Everything has pros and cons. Who is going to invest their own time to make this happen (a third bootloader)? Who is going to maintain it? Who is going to support users requesting even more (while the tools cannot take advantage of it)? And the additional MB in the ISO image? The storage and bandwidth?

UBCD is basically a DIY kind of tool. If users cannot be bothered to read a message in a download page and/or in the ISO image file (in addition to the posts that can be found already here in the forum), then perhaps they are better not using UBCD?

Every feature can be seen as positive. Unfortunately, every feature requires resources; not every feature is worth of them.

[Victor Chew]

I will add some kind of reminder in the download page.

[The Piney]

Many people will not read this.

This is the true and sad fact about many free resources available on the internet. Users that are unwilling to READ before USE.

I've recommended UBCD for so long and to so many people that I've lost count but I always tell those people to "READ" the instructions or research the individual tools/apps BEFORE using. UBCD is NOT a tool you want to run without knowledge or caution as you can easily render a system non-bootable with tools/apps such as DBaN.

As Victor stated this failure/error occurred prior to the boot process. This is basically a compatibility issue somewhat similar to trying to read a DVD in a CD only drive.

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This thread does bring an idea to my mind - how about a new start screen/menu entry that asked if the user has "READ" the instruction/manuals with a simple yes or no. Selecting the Yes would take you to the current start screen/menu and selecting No would take you to a reboot or boot other device screen/menu.