Q4OS Forum

DescendingNerdliness

Member

Registered: 2026-01-27

Posts: 2

Installed bios boot instead of efi on flash drive

The live disk of q4os-6.5-x64-tde.r2 looks really good. The display scaling on boot is a fantastic feature. No squinting.

Using graphic install with manual partitioning. I tried 3 times and the last time I am sure I got it right: gpt partitions; an efi partition with boot flag; mount points set; write grub to the flash drive.

The efi partition was created and formatted but not populated. There is a fully populated /boot directory on the system partition.

While the grub.cfg mentions efi boot, on boot attempts the flash drive is not even recognized by the Lenovo T420.

I have never really poked around a bios boot partition, but I assume that is what I have. You would thing a laptop as old as the T420 would boot a bios disk.

Is there is another switch somewhere that would have it populate the efi partition.

Thanks!

Last edited by DescendingNerdliness (2026-01-27 22:29)

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,560

Re: Installed bios boot instead of efi on flash drive

The first thing you need to do is to establish the boot mode that is set in the BIOS on your machine.
Normally something like f1 or f2 - my Tpad 530m uses f12 - pressed at boot will take you there.
Look in the boot section and it may well be set to dual. That will boot either legacy or efi.
To force the issue you can switch to efi only.
Make sure Secure Boot is switched off.
During the install you have to pick what goes in which partition. I always recommend using manual settings rather than allowing the installer to do it for you.
Just make sure you are pointing at the USB key you are going to be using, not the one you booted from.

DescendingNerdliness

Member

Registered: 2026-01-27

Posts: 2

Re: Installed bios boot instead of efi on flash drive

Thank you very much @bin.

Changing the bios to uefi only was the answer.

My wife thanks you as well. The ultimate install was on a resource limited HP thin client that runs her TV. I believe it is an S6200. I have another that I plan to install Q4OS on to use as a server.

Thanks again.
Perhaps, a UEFI switch on the partitioning page of the installer would solve this problem in the future.

Patrick.

Last edited by DescendingNerdliness (2026-02-05 19:41)

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,560

Re: Installed bios boot instead of efi on flash drive

You're both very welcome - good to see old kit being kept alive!