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View Full Version : How to avoid running windows on first boot of new Dell PC?



dankegel
August 16th, 2018, 07:37 PM
Hi!
I'm installing Ubuntu on a bunch of new Dell 8930 PCs.
They appear to ship suspended, so when you power them on, they resume to Windows Setup
rather than do a POST. That means they ignore the keyboard, and you can't get a boot menu.
You're forced to go through Windows Setup.

But I don't want to do that, not even once, not even a little bit. I want to abort out of
the Windows setup or not resume into it at all, and instead boot straight to an
Ubuntu usb install.

Anyone know how to coax a new Dell PC to POST rather than resume?
(I know, I could click through and accept the windows license, and it would probably work,
but I don't want to do that.)

I did it successfully with the first two systems, but the third one refused to do anything
but a) boot loop or b) resume windows setup until I finished setup and let it boot to windows,
where I grudgingly turned off fast boot (turning off secure boot also seemed neccessary
to get out of the boot loop) and shut windows down for the first and last time.

Is there some key that 'bios' pays attention to when it's in that "I'm going to
ignore the keyboard and resume from disk" mode?

TheFu
August 16th, 2018, 08:20 PM
Pull the HDD. Put it on a shelf. Should you need warranty service, you'll have it.

Put in an empty replacement HDD/SSD that fits.

dankegel
August 16th, 2018, 11:08 PM
That's good advice.

But I'm going to keep living dangerously, and overwriting the m.2 disk that came with the systems for now. I do have one dual boot system, so I have the bits if I need them, more or less.

TheFu
August 17th, 2018, 02:02 AM
At least make an image of the SSD. Use fsarchiver and it will compress the image and let you restore to a smaller partition.

oldfred
August 17th, 2018, 04:58 AM
recent Dell systems have needed UEFI updates & for NVMe SSDs firmware updates.
Even if systems from same order, you may have different versions of UEFI or SSD firmware.

Dell XPS 8920 desktop GTX 1060, needed UEFI/BIOS update
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2370434
Dell XPS 8920 & Nvidia GTX 1060 & PCIe M2 drive Raid change to AHCI
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2360929
Dell support - Update on XPS 13/15 2016 Developer Edition availability
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/t/19670562?pi22229=9