Score:1

Thinkpad E14 Gen 4 not booting installer

de flag

I have recently bought a ThinkPad E14 Gen 4 with an Intel core-i7 1260P, and am trying to dual boot Ubuntu 22.04 LTS alongside Windows.

My laptop came with Windows 11 Pro preinstalled and I have not messed with that or my UEFI settings. I flashed the image (from Canonical's website) to a USB drive using Rufus, and attempted booting to it. However, when I select the USB drive in the boot menu, nothing happens - once I exit the boot menu, the laptop just boots back to Windows.

How do I proceed?

Score:2
de flag

TL;DR Go into your BIOS/UEFI using the F1 key. Then go to Security > Secure Boot > toggle Allow Microsoft 3rd party UEFI CA to be on. Save and exit (F10), and then use F12 to boot to the Ubuntu install media.


I found the source of the problem. It was Secure Boot, though that initially confused me because Ubuntu is supposed to support secure boot.

Well, I found this strange option in the BIOS/UEFI and decided to investigate: Allow Microsoft 3rd party UEFI CA. Turns out that Lenovo had published a document advising about this change, mandated by Microsoft: https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/Enable_Secure_Boot_for_Linux_Secured-core_PCs.pdf

Enabling that setting allowed me to boot to the Ubuntu installer.

I did this on a ThinkPad E14 Gen 4 running Windows 11 Pro with BitLocker enabled. Consequently, when I booted back to Windows, I was asked for a BitLocker key. I was able to follow instructions from Microsoft's website (given on the screen when asked for the key), but you might want to consider retrieving/storing said key before you change UEFI settings.

Raibyo avatar
eg flag
This solution worked for me when installing Fedora 38 Workstation on a ThinkPad P14s gen 3. Thank you.
Score:0
cn flag

maybe it didn't flash correctly, try Ventoy instead of Rufus, its easier

eccentricOrange avatar
de flag
Didn't help. Ultimately seems like Microsoft was messing around with secure boot. See my solution.
I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

mangohost

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.