Bootloader Asus
Barbro Faries
Hi everyone,
I was just curious where the refunds will go for the bait and switch scam Asus ran by removing the ability to unlock bootloaders?
You know, since the phone was sold with the ability to unlock the bootloader and install your own firmware officiall from Asus themselves, something which undoubtedly was a major reason a lot of people chose to buy this phone, since it negates the issue with a shorter time for software updates than most phones.
Since it ended up being pretty much a classic bait and switch scam, like selling a phone with 12gb ram and then delivering a phone with only 4, just curious how they're going to go about refunding me for the phone. Are they going to mail me a check? Or maybe a bank transfer? Hopefully not just in store credit, right?
Weird decision though on Asus' part, to just scam a bunch of people instead of letting them do something with the hardware they bought, destroying a whole lot of brand loyalty they may have had. I dunno though, that's just my 2 cents.
Unrelated note, anyone know any good routers with custom firmware on par with AsusWRT-Merlin that don't lose hardware acceleration? Gonna have to find a new company to buy routers from, and GPUs, and phones, and basically all kinds of hardware.
Thanks a lot.
Why is that a scam? You think opening the bootloader was promised in perpetuity? Have you read the Asus terms? I understand your frustration - but the solution is simple in such cases: move on to something else, stop pretending the manufacturer is supposed to provide you with the means to engage in non-standard, questionable procedures.
An unlockable bootloader is a non-standard, questionable procedure? Omg, that's crazy, why would Asus sell a phone and specifically provide a questionable procedure with their own first party tool? You know, they could have mentioned that in the official press release where they announced this first party tool stating "unlocking the bootloader is as easy as downloading the utility, installing it, and running it." A statement they then sold phones off of (the bait), before removing it after the phones were sold (the switch.)
A manufacturer is not supposed to provide a tool for unlocking a bootloader. A manufacturer that comes out and provides an official tool for unlocking a bootloader and then sells a phone with that feature is though. Hopefully you can see the difference.
For example, I sell you a palm pilot without wifi, I am not obligated for it to have wifi. Another situation, I sell you a smartphone with wifi, then after the fact decide it no longer is going to have support for wifi, you use your 5g only. Though I guess you toss it in the bin and go "oh well", buy another phone?
This statement was true, until Asus push several update to prevent OS roll back and shutdown their unlock server. I am not gonna blame you for not following up with the current situation, but the reason why we got so many angry user now is exactly because there is absolutely no way to unlock the bootloader of any newer Asus smartphone because of Asus's "effort", despite their promise from last year stating the bootloader could be unlock again in Q4 2023.
I have Fast boot and secure boot disabled. There is no CMS option listed on the x551m. I am really not a fan of the UEFI setup especially with malware you need to have the ability to boot from a simple flash drive to remove the garbage. I realize that there are flash drive based malware as well but does that mean the manufacturers need to remove the ability or make it extremely difficult for IT professionals to get their jobs done?
Same problem here and had It in the past too; with Acer and now with asus(X551M).
In first case it was nightmare; machine was running some kind of linux, not Ubuntu not any usable desktop linux. I had to tell my client that I was not able to set up windows. It was very shameful/awkward moment for me.
How to Create a Bootable UEFI USB Flash Drive for Installing Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1This tutorial will show you how to create a Windows 7 or Windows 8 or 8.1 installation bootable USB flash drive for UEFIfrom either a Windows 7 or...
And the question is what other phone could you recommend? I must admit that now I am looking for something cheaper as Asus disappointed me with removing the bootloader and I do not want to invest again in something expensive
I am trying to install Debian in ASUS P2440UA laptop. Previously I was using Windows 7 and Linux Mint in dual boot without any issue (for 6 months). But I decided to format whole hard drive and install only Debian. I have formatted the hard drive as GPT and tried to install Debian in UEFI mode. I used 256 MB EFI system partition, 60 GB root and 4 GB swap. Rest of the space is mounted as home. But at the end of installation process "failed to install grub bootloader on a hard drive".Then I have followed this -GRUB-Boot-Loader-Not-installing-on-Hard-Drive but still didn't worked. It was an "input output error".Then I have found this When wouldn't you want to install GRUB bootloader? saying that installing grub in a modern computer is not the best option.
My problem was poor implementation of UEFI by ASUS in my ASUS P2440UA laptop. While trying to find a solution I have found in many documents that UEFI standed is not strictly maintained by manufacturers. I have found a way to install Debina in UEFI mode but I can't consider it as a solution.
From the info you provided, GRUB may not be the issue. It might be a poor implementation of UEFI by the computer manufacturer. Attempting to manually reinstall or fix GRUB would not help if this is the case.
Try installing rEFInd onto a USB drive and booting it (assuming your computer can boot from USB). Follow the instructions and links at to download and install. I recommend using the USB image file. There's a good chance rEFInd will find your Debian installation and kernel image and present an option to boot it.
You may run into root access issues that need fixing first before you can install rEFInd on the main system. In my own experience, Debian's install process didn't enable root access despite me confirming otherwise. I'll leave this for some other time. As to why Windows and Mint worked before, if they were both on the same ESP, I'm guessing the UEFI detected Windows's presence and so was able to see other systems. If Windows was not present, it wouldn't have seen Mint (and therein lies the problem).
I had to do a lot of research for this because I'm assuming few people own hardware with poor UEFI firmware, so this issue is rarely reported and asked about. This is my two cents in order for me to give it more exposure. I hope I was able to help. I'm definitely not a Linux expert so feel free to correct anything I may have wrong. Anyway, good luck!
1 TB Sabrent Rocket nvme containing GRUB installed in efi mode on partition 1, a bog standard FAT32 formated EFI partition. Partition 2 is swap, partition 3 is LVM containing 2 logical partitions, both encrypted, one mounted as /, the other as /home.
The board is not showing me GRUB as a boot option. The exact same setup already ran without an issue on an Asrock board (which had a defective wifi adapter, thus the change of motherboard). The board is correctly detecting all three SSDs as storage devices. It also fails to boot an Ubuntu live USB that was booting just fine on the Asrock board.
Windows (or ASUS crappy firmware) overwrote your Master Boot Record since you installed both operating systems on the same drive. Solution: How to repair the GRUB bootloader using a Ubuntu Live USB drive FOSS Linux
But there is much simpler workaround:
grub installs its efi binary in /EFI/grub/grubx64.efi
but motherboards do not check for this path by default - that is wht grub-install is necessary - to tell the mobo to look there.
I`m using router Asus RT-N11P many years with openwrt. Starting from the 21.02 firmware, I noticed that the boot time has increased from 30s to 45s. After upgrading to the version 22.03 boot time increase even more, to 1 minute. This is definitely not ok for me. Is it possible to return 30s somehow???
I agree with @slh. Newer hardware will probably have a boot time that is significantly lower based on all of the factors -- more RAM, faster processor, and higher internal bandwidth on the memory and flash storage.
That said, the other thing is that routers running OpenWrt should not require reboots frequently in most situations. So if you're rebooting enough for the extra overhead of a reboot to be material in your usage, you may want to consider why you're rebooting as frequently as you are.
Boot times -within reason- don't really depend that much on the CPU performance, other factors (bootloader, time needed for RAM training and device initialization etc.) are the dominant factors (and these may even take longer on newer systems, more complex hardware, driving the RAM harder, more hardware to initialize). 45s are completely within normal expectations, anything under 60s isn't really a problem - and the 5 GHz WLAN will take another minute on top to scan the environment for DFS events as well.
Compared to many commercial firmwares (with proprietary wireless drivers, needing special orchestration, starting lots of proprietary (cloud-)dmons, etc.), OpenWrt tends to (re-)boot significantly faster as well.
Minimum system requirements on OpenWrt however are usually specified very conservatively, only raised well after the fact of these no longer being viable for 'normal' operations; 128 MB RAM really should be considered the minimum sane requirement (combined with at least 16 MB flash) - and both are welcome to exceed those minima.
It's unlikely that a tech-savvy individual like you is unfamiliar with the term "bootloader unlock." Unlocking your bootloader allows you to root your device and install a custom recovery. It gives you access to a whole world of new software that can help you customize and improve your experience with your device. Asus has an excellent system for unlocking your bootloader, and it's simple, efficient, and easy to use. Unlock Asus bootloader in minutes, and it's worth the effort.
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