Software - UEFI Issues

Software - BIOS Issues

1. New PC with a UEFI BIOS: I took delivery of a new 64bit Windows 10 based PC and discovered, after the event, that it would not run any version of Windows prior to Windows 10 - some versions of Linux are fine. Since I have valid licences for WindowsXP and Windows7 in order to run some legacy software on a prior PC this was a major inconvenience. The solution was to install a virtualisation package and run the earlier operating systems within virtual machines. There are several such packages available and I chose VMWare - this allows the host PC to share its resources like disk space, USB ports, printers etc with the virtual machine.

The BIOS does not support diskette or floppy drives so file movement must be by memory stick, CD/DVD/BluRay and the network. It has been stated by a number of Linux users that the UEFI BIOS can cause problems with the GRUB boot loader but my version of GRUB from Ubuntu works with no problems. However, the BIOS does allow a nominated drive or memory stick to be booted without changing the boot order which is very helpful.

Several Linux distros were tried but the one that gave the best results was Ubuntu 64 bit. The Nvidia dual monitor graphics card is a relatively new design and finally bespoke Linux drivers did appear.

Windows 11 will run on this PC as it stands but requires a BIOS security facility to be activated. However it is not clear how many of my legacy applications will run on Windows 11.