Boot issue after installation on Acer Swift 3 laptop (only with 64 bits version)

[Stavros]

Hello all,

I bought an Acer Swift 3 recently and I tried to install Linux Mint 18.1 on it. I had boot issue after installation even if the UEFI and secure boot were activated or deactivated. It is very strange because I tried with both Mint 18.1 Cinnamon ‘’64bits’’ and Ubuntu 16.04.1 ‘’64bits’’ and I had the same issue. When the istallation finishes, it asks me to reboot and then it asks me to remove the USB drive and press enter. After I press enter, it the laptop restarts and I have a message that the are no bootable devices to be found. When I look in the laptop’s BIOS, I see that My SSD drive (liteon 256GB) is in the first position to boot. Even if I press F12 to get the Acer boot menu at start up, I see the SSD drive but when I select it I still get the error message. I booted back with the USB drive in a live session and started gparted. I see that there is a small EFI partition in fat32 and then the ext4 and swap partition. What is strange about this laptop’s UEFI/BIOS is that I can’t deactivate secure boot alone and keep EUFI boot. The only way to deactivate secure boot is by deactivating the UEFI boot and go to legacy boot. So I tried installing the 64 bits versions of both Mint 18.1 and Ubuntu 16.04.1 in Lecacy boot but I had the same issue and there is a EFI partition created even if I istalled it on Legacy boot. I also tried to manually partitioned the drive in the installation process without the EFI partition like I was used to do with my old laptop. The problem is that the installer doesn’t let me do it and I have the message that I need to have the EFI partition (I can’t go fruther in the installation process after I get this message). In legacy mode I should be able to do only an EXT4 partiton and a swap? So I tried with 32 bits version of Mint 18.1 and everything worked fine. I only see my EXT4 and Swap partition in gparted and it boots up realy fast. The only problem is about the fact that using a 32 bits Linux on a brand new laptop isn’t realy interesting. Do someone knows what can be causing this issue. I’ve installed Linux Mint and other Linux distros on multiple laptops over the years and I never had to face this kind of issue.

PROCESSOR / CHIPSET
CPU Intel Core i5 (6th Gen) 6200U / 2.3 GHz
Max Turbo Speed 2.8 GHz
Number of Cores Dual-Core
Cache 3 MB
64-bit Computing Yes
Features Hyper-Threading Technology, Intel Smart Cache, Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0

RAM
Memory Speed 2133 MHz
Memory Specification Compliance PC4-17000
Configuration Features provided memory is soldered
Technology DDR4 SDRAM
Installed Size 8 GB

AUDIO & VIDEO
Graphics Processor Intel HD Graphics 520
Memory Allocation Technology shared video memory (UMA)
Integrated Webcam Yes
Sound Stereo speakers, microphone
Features Acer TrueHarmony technology

HARD DRIVE
Type SSD (liteon)
SSD Form Factor M.2 2280
Capacity 256 GB

Thanks in advance for your answers

[prestonR]

This seems to be a bug, use 32bits as a work-around for now and keep your eyes on this thread:
https://community.acer.com/t5/Swift-Spi ... rue/page/3

[Stavros]

I went to Acer website for drivers and updates and I see that there is a new BIOS available for the Acer Swift 3. The BIOS version installed on my Swift 3 is V1.03 (August 4th 2016) and the new version available from Acer is V1.05 (October 30 2016). I downloaded it but i'm a little bit scared about flashing the BIOS. It's a .exe file that we have to run from Windows. Hopefully, It might fix the issue people are experiencing installing Linux on this laptop.

[prestonR]

Please keep us posted, nice little machine, would be great if it works.
Fingers crossed.

Hey, and I'm talking about 64bit Mint, not the BIOS update, that should of course work fine ...

[Stavros]

Yesterday I recieved a windows update for "Insyde Software - Firmware" and after the restart I checked my bios version and It's V1.07 now instead of V1.03

The difference that I see in this bios version compare to the older one is in the bootable devices priority. Instead of having the SSD in 1st position, I see the boot partition EFI 1st and then the SSD 2nd.

Note that the older version of the bios did not show the boot partition EFI as one of the boot choices

I'll try Mint 18.1 stable Cinnamon as soon as it's available.

I'll post comments of the installation/boot results and hopefully it will be positive.

[Stavros]

Linux Mint 18.1 beta 64bit is booting. I decided to setup an administrator password in the bios to have full access into it. I installed Linux Mint with UEFI boot with secure boot deactivated and it didn't boot after installation. I decided to look at the bios options a little bit more and I found out that there are options in the secure boot menu. I reactivated the secure boot and I went to the secure boot option menu in which we can select a trusted .efi file. I accessed this option menu and chose HDD0 and then I had multiple choices, most of them were series of numbers but one was called ubuntu, I selected ubuntu and then I had 3 choices and one of them was x64grub.efi. I selected the x64grub.efi and rebooted in Linux Mint. That's how I had Linux Mint 18.1 working in my Acer Swift 3.

[dade]

It seems here's a bug in the mainline kernel doesn't play well together with the laptop's firmware. Once your installer's boot file is marked as trustworthy in your efi bios security settings, try to boot your distro installer medium (64 bit, there's no need to downgrade to 32 bit) with acpi=off or acpi=noirq as a kernel parameter (press 'e' in the grub menu and append the string after "ro" or "quiet"). Install your distro, reboot and exchange the regular kernel for the the grsecurity / grsec kernel. Check out my howto here: https://medium.com/@dade/how-to-linux-a ... .dshr223hm Hope that helps!