2035
Parents’ old Dell Optiplex is still running Win10 and needs updating to something else before October when Win10 support ends. What a pain in the arse.
First job is to deal with this:
I'm trying to install Win11 but so far can't boot with USB sticks formatted to UEFI OR legacy. They both hang during installation.
Some googling found that maybe updating the BIOS (from A05 to A24) will help… It might allow toggling of Secure Boot, an option which is utterly absent from the current bios.
An update is available from Dell, but it's a Windows\DOS executable… so I need a Windows installation before running it. How wonderful.
…because by now I had already swapped the SSD (to increase the storage available to parents) and wiped the old SSD to make it the main drive in one of the T410s (which can live with a smaller drive).
…so now I'm reïnstalling Win10 Pro, unthinkably, to try this bios update. Wot a waste of time.
EVEN MORE FUN: first auto-reboot during installation gives “no boot devices” error. The fuq?
Hoping switching back to legacy solves this…
Yup, we might be in business. Can't believe I've just installed an ancient version of Win10!
Now to flash the bios and hold onto our butts.
…it claims flash successful!
But seemingly nothing has changed in bios; there's still no Secure Boot option.
Trying to install Win11 from legacy USB stick: hangs.
Trying to install Win11 from UEFI USB stick: looked like it was hanging… THEN PROGRESS! Win11 is installing. No idea if updating the BIOS is what changed things, but we're heading in the right direction.
(Only small issue was that bios was still set to boot in legacy (despite installing via UEFI (this was done via F12)) so a gentle and amazingly useful error message popped up suggesting that I might like to reboot into bios and change to UEFI to let windows 11 boot.)
