Tag: BIOS

How to install Linux Mint on Crucial MX500 SATA SSD drive on Dell Vostro 3546 laptop after BIOS upgrade

The humble Dell Vostro 3546 is an old laptop from 2014, which came with an Intel 4th Generation 4210U processor, 1 TB SATA 5400 rpm hard disk and 4 GB DDR3 (low voltage) 1.35V RAM. It worked fine till now even when it ran Linux Mint 20.3 with Blender 3D. However, everytime an Android app … Continue reading How to install Linux Mint on Crucial MX500 SATA SSD drive on Dell Vostro 3546 laptop after BIOS upgrade →

How to enable the UEFI in VirtualBox for a Windows 10 virtual machine running on Linux

This is for those who missed checking the UEFI checkbox in the settings prior to installing Windows 10 in VirtualBox. Do the below at your own risk, take appropriate backup, First, check and confirm if BIOS Mode is Legacy, which means MBR is the partition and not GPT. To do this, press Windows+R and run:msinfo32.msc … Continue reading How to enable the UEFI in VirtualBox for a Windows 10 virtual machine running on Linux →

How to report battery or other issue to Dell using SupportAssist Diagnostics if you use Linux

Dell has an application SupportAssist on the laptops it sells. To them, this is their bible about the information on your laptop. Any issue reported to Dell, ends up with technical support staff who ask to run SupportAssist first thing. On a Linux machine, SupportAssist will not work, even in a virtual machine. To overcome … Continue reading How to report battery or other issue to Dell using SupportAssist Diagnostics if you use Linux →

Display all hardware information in Linux using lshw

To find out the details of every hardware component in a Linux computer, open a terminal window and enter: $ sudo lshw <enter> Display all hardware information in Linux using lshw in a shorter report $ sudo lshw --short <enter> The report generated is very detailed and precise. It can be used to help decisions … Continue reading Display all hardware information in Linux using lshw →

How to upgrade Dell BIOS on a Ubuntu laptop with FreeDOS

Those of us who use only Linux Laptops like Dell's Vostro 3546 with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installed on it, cannot just apply the BIOS upgrades that Dell provides on it's web site. The BIOS update file is actually a MS DOS .EXE file and it requires MS DOS to work. Here's how to apply the … Continue reading How to upgrade Dell BIOS on a Ubuntu laptop with FreeDOS →

Install Fedora 18 on Lenovo Ideapad Z580 laptop

Finally, installed Fedora 18 64 bit on the Lenovo Ideapad Z580 laptop and it works almost perfect. Basically, Fedora 18 support UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface). I tried Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS as suggested on several blog posts first. Did a successful installation, but there were random, unpredictable hangs when booting. All of them listed USB … Continue reading Install Fedora 18 on Lenovo Ideapad Z580 laptop →