Fujitsu Lifebook T901 - No USB ports/ODD accessable - Copy Windows UEFI mode setup files to a drive on a different computer?

Hi,

over the holidays extended family has visited/invaded (cp. "National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation") and Cousin Eddie brought an old Sandy Bridge i7 Fujitsu Lifebook T901 (the business thingy with tablet mode) for me to fix since I “do stuff with computers all the time”.

He got it from a business liquidation for free, its hardware still works fine (tested all of it) however some sort of Fujitsu business security software is enabled so the user cannot enter the BIOS or change the boot device. I have the username/password for this security software but haven’t found access to where to enter the credentials (the included drive had been properly wiped).

You can easily replace the SATA drive with another one already containing an operating system and it boots just fine off of it (this is how I tested its functionality).

Since he would like to use Windows 10 Pro with Bitlocker (which requires UEFI boot if I remember correctly) I’d like to prepare a blank SSD on a different computer with the drive properly prepared with the needed Windows setup files.

For legacy installations this is quite easy but I have no idea how to do this for UEFI boot mode.

The laptop supports UEFI boot mode.

Can someone be so kind as to offer a “simple” guide how to prepare a drive for an UEFI Windows setup so the laptop can do the installatoin on its own to avoid potential issues from a Windows that had been installed on a different system and was then moved to the laptop?

Thank you very much for the help!

Regards,

aBavarian Normie-Pleb

The matter has been resolved by installing Linux Mint on a different computer and then moving the drive into the laptop.

Some comments/corrections:

  • The T901 seems to not be able to boot in UEFI mode, HWiNFO seems to have been mistaken here.

  • The BIOS is a piece of shit: Could get it out of “hiding” by removing and replacing the CMOS battery, prior to that F2 to enter BIOS didn’t have any effect (the hardware design of this machine leads to anger management issues when opening it up: http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/threads/t901-disassembly-guide.56180/ ).

You can only boot via USB when no SATA dervice is connected.

No settings for legacy/UEFI boot mode.

At least you can disable the Intel Management Engine and the TPM module.

  • Windows 10 kills itself on the machine via automatic Windows Updates (even if automatic driver download is disabled), as soon as drivers for the dedicated NVIDIA Kepler Quadro GPU are loaded the system freezes - these drivers are also forced to the machine by Windows Update.

For Sandy Bridge’s HD 3000 iGPU you can find unofficial drivers that work under Windows 10.

  • Windows 7 and 8.1 work OK.

  • Linux Mint works just fine, you can even switch between the Intel iGPU and the NVIDIA dGPU after downloading additional NVIDIA drivers.