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I have a DELL machine that use Phoenix SecureCore Tiano as its UEFI/BIOS However, it is totally not configurable as its UEFI shell & menus are hidden in BIOS Setup.

I'm wondering if there were tools that can modify the UEFI settings(such as Boot Items) in user mode? such as "efibootmgr" in linux.

btw, because it is not configurable, I think the boot process is in legacy mode so that's to say OSes can not detect the UEFI exist, am i right?

so, that's the paradox: I must be boot in non-legacy mode to enable UEFI tools to modify boot items in user mode? but I must enable UEFI tools to modify boot items first to enable non-legacy boot?

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EFI implementations must provide some way to control the boot mode (EFI vs. BIOS), except of course for EFI-only implementations without BIOS support. Too often, though, the firmware gives the user little or no explicit control of the matter; instead, the firmware attempts to infer the correct boot mode based on the state of the hard disk -- for instance, it might use EFI mode if a GPT is detected and BIOS mode if an MBR is found; or it might use EFI mode if an EFI System Partition (ESP) is found and BIOS mode if not. You may be able to find a clue about what your firmware is doing by reading the manual. If not, you'll just have to experiment.

When booting removable media, the rules may be different, but you can often give it a kick in the right direction by providing just one boot mode. This may require re-mastering a CD or (more easily) carefully selecting a CD. If you're trying to force an EFI-mode boot, my rEFInd, and in particular its bootable CD version, may be helpful; it boots only in EFI mode, and as configured, it will act as a boot manager for other EFI-based boots, but not for BIOS-mode boots.

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  • thanks! when i partition my hd in MBR mode, it works as expected. however, if i use GPT mode, no matter there is an ESP or not, it just won't boot and gives this error: "Operation System not Found". The error message /w syntax error, is surely from the BIOS itself after I reverse engineered the BIOS rom (not from any bootloader or boot record), so I just can not get the boot control to be passed in GPT mode.
    – marstone
    May 29, 2012 at 1:49
  • Some EFI-based systems will only boot in BIOS mode if they detect an MBR partition with its "boot" (aka "active") flag set. On a GPT disk, this requires setting that flag on the 0xEE protective partition in the MBR. You can use a tool like Linux's fdisk to do this (use the "a" option). Do not use parted, GParted, or other libparted-based tools to do this; on a GPT disk, they give you no control over what's in the MBR, and the "boot flag" will be applied to a GPT partition, with the meaning being that it sets the type code to that of an EFI System Partition (ESP).
    – Rod Smith
    Jun 1, 2012 at 4:50
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I've just bought a Dell XPS 17 (l702x) and I'm interested in multi-booting a variety of OSes. If what I've understood is correct, the Dell has some form of locked-down Phoenix SecureCore Tiano UEFI 'BIOS'. From what I've read, UEFI isn't directly usable (possibly via a hidden menu etc., which might require a BIOS mod).

It does seem possible to use/access a Phoenix compatible EFI shell, using the open-source (BSD) TianoCore edk2/ShellPkg (source) and edk2/ShellBinPkg (binary) packages (GIT Repo).

I recommend the newer ShellBinPkg, using the "full shell" profile of UEFI Shell 2.0 (supports the most commands). You can also rebuild a custom shell using the ShellPkg (build standalone or include it in the OVMF package to generate a x64 version) - Inclusion of UEFI shell in Linux distro iso.

The [U]EFI shell binary is compiled to run independent of the firmware. This can be tested by putting the shell on a FAT32 file system (USB stick, hard drive partition), renamed as /efi/boot/bootx64.efi and then booting to it, from your [UEFI] BIOS.

Help text for the shell is accessed by typing help utilname. Just using help produces a list of all available shell commands.

Note: If you are unable to launch UEFI Shell from the firmware directly, create a FAT32 USB pen drive with Shell.efi copied as (USB)/efi/boot/bootx64.efi . This USB should come up in the firmware boot menu. Launching this option will launch the UEFI Shell for you. - Arch Linux's take on UEFI

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  • that's great. i bought the same model l702x ;-) i'll try it tomorrow! the hidden menu is still unlockable as far as i know. btw, do u have compiled bootx64.efi and have tested on your xps yet?
    – marstone
    Jul 22, 2012 at 16:50
  • ShellBinPkg is a UEFI shell pre-compiled binary, you're supposed to be able just have to rename it and put in the right directory. I tried it, and it didn't work for me, but I don't believe it's the only shell that's available (I'm new to this, also). This post seems to offer a shell download which should work with Phoenix SecureCore Tiano (See the.ridikulus.rat->cfr conversation). Let us know how you get on.
    – Big Rich
    Jul 23, 2012 at 16:57
  • I tried put the efi file from the above post to /efi/boot/bootx64.efi, however, my usb disk booted to grub normally(it is bootable already); then i formatted my u-disk to HDD mode, and i got the error "Remove disks or other media ...". I then took a hex search for this string sector by sector in my u-disk, it did not exist. the message must from L702x's Tiano BIOS. anything wrong for my operations?
    – marstone
    Jul 25, 2012 at 14:25
  • @marstone, sorry man, but I'm a newbie myself when it comes to this UEFI stuff (I'm just OK with my Google-fu ;-) ). Been occupied elsewhere, as soon as I get some time I'll try this myself and let you know how I get on. Cheers, Rich.
    – Big Rich
    Jul 26, 2012 at 20:15
  • Although Dell has now released a UEFI enabled bios (A19), 'capitankasar' over at notebookreview posted 2x modded A18 bioses (uefi, uefi+nvida gpu), they address UEFI, NVidia GPU overclocking and fan speeds etc. (some of these features may also exist in the official Dell release, I haven't confirmed this myself). As always, use at your own risk ;-)
    – Big Rich
    Nov 8, 2012 at 11:56
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Michael Niehaus recently released a powershell module for modifying UEFI variables on Windows.

It provides the following functions:

  • Get-UEFIVariable
  • Set-UEFIVariable
  • Set-LHSTokenPrivilege
  • Get-UEFISecureBootCerts
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  • PowerShell blocks scripts, how do I enable such?
    – DavidTaubmann
    Oct 20, 2022 at 4:39
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In my experiments, I concluded as follows:

If you wish to use an U/EFI multi-boot USB key, you MUST:

  1. clear all partitions/wipe drive entirely;
  2. convert it to GPT;
  3. create a primary partition and format it as Fat32;
  4. make a dir called EFI (not case sensitive) in the root of the drive;
  5. create a subdir in previous dir called boot (not case sensitive, too)
  6. put your desired .efi file in there and rename it to match the system's architecture: bootx64.efi if x64, bootia32.efi if x86 or bootaa64.efi if ARM64.

Tried it in a Dell Inspiron 5437 touchscreen and worked perfectly.

One last thing: if the .efi file isn't signed with Microsoft's digital signature, must disable only secure boot mode under fw settings. Leave the UEFI boot and fast boot mode enabled.

For tests, find multi-boot key of your OEM machine before to install it permanently and select uefi: <your usb key> from the presented list.

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I just release my utility if anyone is interested. It edits UEFI variable in windows.

https://gist.github.com/Zibri/19f9838ffd12349bb2c6c3afddc9388f/

Updated on 25/02/2020 to version 1.2.
No internet connection needed.
Virus total reports 6 (false positives) over 96 because the code is obfuscated.

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  • IT IS NOT. The program is compressend and protected and some antiviruses give a false positive. It's no virus.
    – Zibri
    Sep 8, 2018 at 11:07
  • For flaggers: This program gets a somewhat alarming detection at Virustotal but it appears to be generic detection and "potentially unwanted program" detections. It is possible that due to what this program does it has made it's way into malware suites but until someone can offer direct evidence that this is actual malware then the answer is fine for now.
    – Mokubai ♦
    Dec 7, 2019 at 8:55
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    @Zibri Yes, I understand but a) Windows code like that exists already (chipsec) and b) inevitably this will get "exploited", and, given this isn't anything new, no playing on time will help. But all this reasoning is off-topic for this site, I disagree, but that's not the point. The point is that I don't think we should make people run possibly-sketchy obfuscated code as admin. Yours can be legit but others might not. Saying "yeah, AV thinks it's a virus" is... not helping either. Arguably this will lead to more exploited users.
    – ljrk
    Jul 26, 2020 at 21:52
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    @Zibri Anyhow, I want people to make their decision based on more information than "someone on SO said this is fine despite all alarm bells ringing". That's why I provided a first look into the binary that I did after work. It's not complete but it says "this binary might as well be worse than it seems". And I think people should know this when making their decision.
    – ljrk
    Jul 26, 2020 at 21:54
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    @Zibri Speculation is saying "this is malicious" but also saying "this is not malicious". I'm doing neither, I'm saying that it uses sketchy techniques and I'm questioning the legitimacy of the obfuscation. Users can now make their own decision whether to use your program or not, also given your reactions to my comment.
    – ljrk
    Aug 20, 2020 at 10:59
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Editing EFI vars from LINUX CLI:

As stated in this other answer, the simple procedure to modify UEFI variables is to use a bootable USB with Linux (like ArchLinux ISO), and simply navigate to EFIvars as a normal system directory (cd /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/), where you can:

  • remove them (with rm),
  • create new ones (with printf)
  • or even disable file immutability (with chattr)
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