After all is said and done, I was able to repair the Windows 8 machine for my neighbor. Glad it is working now. The main issue was not being able to get to the internet The second issue was the ton of malware and adware it can got.
About the UEFI problem. It prevented me from using a Avira rescue CD that I had used before on my own PCs. Strange that it never said anything about the "secure boot" failure. It just did not boot to either CD or USB device.
After finding out how to disable the secure boot feature, the AV flash drive came up on the reboot and I was able to do some virus removal. Wait, let's backup. It was not easy.
Now here is the hard part. That BIOS has a place where is shays the secure boot is enable and you can
disable it. Well, I disabled it and it still refused to boot the USB stick with the notable AV program. (It is a Linux variant.)
So some more reading and I find a place where the author talks about a 'legacy boot' option being required to boot a Linux device that does not have the proper signature. I understood that doing 'disable' for secure boot was I I would need. Not so! It would seem like there was a conspiracy to confuse users who assume that it is simple.
So I had to try some different things. Turn one thing off and another option disappears. And in another place I read the it is not just a combination, but a sequence. You have to do it in the right order, And of course, you have to save waken your are done.
I am recalcitrant to explain how I found the magic combination. (No, you do not have to spin around three times.) It may be an industrial secret and I could be arrested for a violation of national security.
Looking back and the official statements, it seems that manufacturers have a lot of latitude in how the secure boot is to be disabled. They can make it as hard as they want.
By the way, when you do get if off, anything will boot, If it is bookable. The last thing I did was to restore the BIOS defaults and try a fresh copy of Fedora Linux. And yes, it came up with no issue. The number of major distrtos that do secure boot you can count on the fingers of one hand.
To find Linux distros that work with UFEI, look for
Linux versions for UEFI
And n , I am not paranoid. Not yet. Others are go on and on about this issue. This should have been settled last year, one would think.
Over a month back:
Microsoft's Windows 10 secure boot ruling spells trouble for Linux lovers, dual-bootersFirst reported by Ars Technica, the switch to allow secure boot to be turned off is now optional and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) will not have to include it as an option on hardware that ships with Windows 10 in what is a significant change of tact compared to Windows 8.
The change was announced at the WinHEC conference in Shenzhen, China as part of a presentation on the UEFI Secure Boot and TPM details for OEMs wanting to ship devices labelled "Designed for Windows 10."
I am done with this!
