By 2020, Intel is ending support for legacy/BIOS/non-UEFI

[A Former User]

This doesn’t directly relate to FOG, but it may affect how you use FOG.

https://t.co/D06cERT0yi

This will affect my organization. For our computer labs, we have been using legacy BIOS because disabling legacy actually turns off some feature that make image deployment much easier on a large number of machines, at least on firmware older than a year. I hope this can all be rectified.

[george1421]

Thank you for sharing. We’ve all kind of known that UEFI is here to stay and the days of was BIOS interface numbered. But now to put a time line of 2020 on it, its starting to get real. FOG does handle UEFI as well as BIOS modes well. We still see flaky UEFI firmware (hear me Lenovo and HP fix your stuff) that needs to be resolved.
The hardest parts of transitioning to uefi I’ve seen is:

1. FOG doesn’t work when secure mode is enabled.
2. You can’t just use any random network adapter for PXE booting. The network adapter HAS to be supported by the UEFI firmware to PXE boot. This is in opposition to BIOS where almost any random network adapter has a built in ROM that supports PXE booting.

Today in my company we have 2 base images for Win10. We have one for BIOS and one for UEFI systems. All systems purchased in the last 3 years now get the UEFI image, with the BIOS only allocated to the older systems that don’t do UEFI mode very well.

[A Former User]

@george1421 Do you know if newer Dells support UEFI PXE? That had been an issue in the past; not sure if it still is.

Another feature that legacy BIOS had that UEFI hasn’t had is PXE-boot-on-wake, where the machine would automatically PXE boot any time it was turned on via WoL. This makes imaging large labs very easy. I wonder if UEFI supports this on Dells now?

I just hope they never require Secure Boot. We turn it on for employee machines but not lab machines, since turning it off and on for large labs is a pain and cannot be automated by design.

[george1421]

@loosus456 All newer dells since 2013 support uefi mode, most since 2016 come with uefi enabled. Typically we would reset them back to bios mode for imaging.

Very interesting, I wasn’t aware that WOL did not work in uefi mode. I know Win10 mucks up WOL quite frequently. If the system is completely powered off (not the fast boot mode) WOL with BIOS mode works. I sure hope they get WOL and UEFI mode working.

Again thank you for posting the info. Helpfully it helps others that use fog.

[A Former User]

@george1421 No, wake-on-LAN does work with UEFI. Wake-on-LAN is a different feature from PXE-on-wake. PXE-on-wake makes a computer automatically PXE boot if the computer turns on via wake-on-LAN; otherwise, for regular boots, it follows the normal boot sequence.

At least in older Dell firmware (unsure about newer ones), turning on UEFI would remove the PXE-on-wake option.

[george1421]

@loosus456 said in By 2020, Intel is ending support for legacy/BIOS/non-UEFI:

At least in older Dell firmware (unsure about newer ones), turning on UEFI would remove the PXE-on-wake option

Ah OK. thats a firmware option inside the firmware. Interesting…

I know at least in bios mode Dells had an option called PXE boot on next boot cycle. If I remember correctly with Dell’s CCTK you can tell the system boot pxe on the next system boot. That is a one shot function. You could deploy this instruction using CCTK and a FOG snapin.