I recently got my hands on an Acer TravelMate Spin B118 with 4GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD. I successfully installed Ubuntu using a flash drive, but now I'm having trouble accessing the BIOS. When I hold the F2 key during boot, the screen goes blank apart from a blinking underscore. I'm eager to try out Linux Mint instead, but it seems like Ubuntu has taken over my system. I even tried using the terminal command `sudo systemctl reboot --firmware-setup`, but that yielded an error saying it can't boot into setup mode. I also have a flash drive with Mint ready to go thanks to BalenaEtcher. Can anyone suggest how to get my Acer to boot from the Mint flash drive, or what would be the best steps to install a different Linux flavor?
1 Answer
To boot into Mint, first, make sure you're booted into Ubuntu and then edit the `/etc/default/grub` file. Change the following settings:
- Set `GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=text`
- Set `GRUB_TIMEOUT=2`
After making these changes, run `sudo update-grub` to apply them. This should help you see a boot menu on startup and select the EFI Config to access BIOS options.
Thanks for the tip! I managed to see the menu after that, but when I select UEFI Firmware settings, it just goes back to that annoying blank screen with the blinking cursor. I tried the memory tests too, but got a bad shim error.