UEFI issues putting me off

[rustleg]

My trusty MBR machine is dying and I am in the process of buying new, which obviously will be UEFI. I have used BIBM for many years which has been the rock solid backbone of my system running Windows and several Linuxes, worth several times what I paid for it. Now looking into using BIU I read the section "Limitations & UEFI Issues" which is worrying me.

Unstable software drives me nuts and is one factor in my choice of Linux systems. I have to question if I should change tactic and use multiple VM's instead of multi-booting with BIU.

What is the likelihood of being hit by instability if I try to multi-boot several OS's with BIU? What have others experienced? Is it a function of the motherboard model?

[Brian K]

rustleg,

You don't have to worry. Once you get the hang of BIU it is just as easy to multi-boot as BIBM.

[rustleg]

So you are saying that the issues mentioned are permanently fixable? I got the impression that some of them might happen from time to time without being able to find a permanent solution.

[Brian K]

Can you post a link to these issues? I've had no problems.

[rustleg]

The issues are mentioned in the BIU manual bootituefi_en_manual.pdf page 6.

[Brian K]

Thanks. I've had no issues.

[rustleg]

Thanks Brian. Perhaps TB support will explain the implications of the section of their manual.

[Bob Coleman]

rustleg,

I don't think I've ever read that section of the manual before. I can see how it could be a little frightening. My guess, and it's only that, is that the issues described were much more relevant in early UEFI systems and less so on systems that are new today.

I used to have a system that could be booted in either legacy or UEFI mode. I tried to use BIU on that system and never did get behaving consistently. I gave up and used the system in legacy mode with BIBM for years.

Prompted by the impending demise of Windows 10, I now have a system purchased last year and have had few BIU related issues. I do have a much simpler environment than you describe. My extent of multibooting consists of two copies of Windows 11 and one instance of IFL, but it's pretty stable.

When setting things up, I did get a few instances of Unable to open BOOTIT.DAT, but ignoring it seemed to cause no problems.

I occasionally get a situation where BIU has stopped booting when the system boots and I have to reinstall it, not reconfigure it, just reinstall it. I think that happens only after doing something unusual like restoring the whole disk even though BIU was installed in the system state whose backup I restored.

Overall, for my limited multiboot setup, I consider BIU a success. Certainly worth a try.

If it's not too late, I do advise creating an image backup of the system as received before doing anything else with it.

[rustleg]

Thanks for the info Bob. As I already have a licensed BIU I guess I'll have a go. I will be ordering the new PC without any OS since I don't want Win 11. I plan to buy a retail copy of Windows 10 and then disconnect it from the internet after getting it up to date. I only need it for Excel / Access (with extensive VBA macros) and I can use a NTFS partition for the data files which I can access from Linux, so I don't need to keep updating Windows and Office.

[Brian K]

rustleg,

When installing Linux, it's similar to how you do it with BIBM. Except the Grub boot manager is installed to the EFI System Partition, not to the Linux partition.