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UEFI BIOS: what can't it do?

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videobruce

Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2005
Location
Buffalo NY
I'm discovering (the hard way) this supposed new & improved BIOS deal isn't what's it cracked to be. Is the following a across the board list of what this can't do?

1. The initial boot screen, the one where you can clearly see all the attached drives, flashes by in a second preventing one from seeing anything in a blink of a eye? is there a way to pause this so I can see if all the drives are there without going into the BIOS like it use to be?

2. The 'home page' (or main page if you like) doesn't show the drives either, just the processor & memory which makes that mostly useless. You have to hunt around and go into a sub menu to find that out.

3. There is no ability to isolate SATA ports, it's either all or none which kinda makes that useless if one wants to hide one or two drives for whatever reason.

More questions when I come across more issues.
 
I have to admit when I first started using my UEFI it was a bit confusing. But you eventually get to finding what you're looking for. From what I've read the abilities range quite widely between manufacturers. Saying that the Sabertooth and M5A99FX pro that I have are almost identical. You're right in one thing the main page is pretty useless except as a jump off point.
What board are you using?
 
the uefi bios's vary from board to board and stuff is all under sub menus.
my ch-v-f board has much less in the bios than my ch-v-f-z board and my sabertooth bios is another story and my m5a97 R2.0 is still another.
it just depends on what the board maker included.
and yes, learning the bios on this board, that board and the other board is quite a pain.
 
While some of what you are describing is inherent to the UEFI, others, like caddi said, have to do with your specific board and how its BIOS is laid out.
 
an issue I have with the uefi bios is that it may be subject to virus attack.
a month or two back a member of this forum reported that he had lost 2 or 3l computers to an attack that wrote itself into the bios somehow, further reading on commercial antivirus software sites bore this out and the only protection form this was and i will assume is still to only us an admin account when you must.
 
Not worried about that at all...though it is easier to infect a UEFI bios, non UEFI can still be borked with viruses as well.
 
I see it as a long shot also but the cost is zero dollars and very likely the only thing i will ever get for free I'll take it.
 
Im confused what a windows admin account has to do with the UEFI I must say as the admin account and others for that matter really have nothing to do with the UEFI bios
 
I think it was on the symantic site that said running as a limited user helped keep it from writing itself into the bios somehow, if ocmusicjunkie shows back up I'll try to get the name of the attacker and dig it back up.
 
I have pm'd ocmusicjunkie through this forum so perhaps he will join us and get us up to date.
 
1. you can press the pause button.

another thing uefi cant do is make me coffee.
 
Can't any virus replace that file? That shouldn't have anything to do with admin? Will read thoroughly, and the second link later.
 
1. The initial boot screen, the one where you can clearly see all the attached drives, flashes by in a second preventing one from seeing anything in a blink of a eye? is there a way to pause this so I can see if all the drives are there without going into the BIOS like it use to be?

My board has a "boot prompt timeout" option on the "Bootup" page.

2. The 'home page' (or main page if you like) doesn't show the drives either, just the processor & memory which makes that mostly useless. You have to hunt around and go into a sub menu to find that out.

My board has an option right at the bottom of that "main page" which allows selecting any other page to be the default.

3. There is no ability to isolate SATA ports, it's either all or none which kinda makes that useless if one wants to hide one or two drives for whatever reason.

On my board, if I go to the Southbridge settings, I can see details on any SATA port, tell it whether that port is "external" (i.e. eSATA, enables hot-swapping), disable it completely, and see attached drive information.

So, all of these exist, your board's manufacturer may have just been lazy :)
 
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