That is right, strange. There is NO, NONE, no setting to make the PC boot in legacy mode, None at all. I have looked at every setting. The MSI folks, in this American Megatrends bios have a 'trusted computing' header, when you select it, it is a blank page.
And in boot settings, there are no options to select legacy mode or UEFI mode.

On the Mint Forum, I had a poster flat out tell me this is NOT a UEFI bios and motherboard, so I show him the warning screen about the machine firmware starting in UEFI mode, and then several more people tell me this is not a UEFI motherboard bios issue, so they dont seem to have a clue even with thousands of posts....
And the final solution they had was just run 32 bit Mint.

I have a better solution, install 64 bit Mint on another pc which is using bios mode, then plug into this PC and run it. The comments I got back was the system would be all messed up switching motherboard chipsets and they would consider it dumb idea, but it worked in the past for me.

We just cant get past this UEFI issue ever I think except if the linux programmers can create a switch to install in bios mde.

I think when I boot my ubuntu 64 bit on this PC, it was installed in legacy bios mode on my other PC which has died.

Then when I install 64 bit Mint to the 3rd hard drive, since machine is running in legacy bios mode, it installs and works, because it booted Ubuntu 64 bit installed in legacy mode from the dead PC which I yanked that drive and put it in this PC..

But when I pull all drives and leave this one, and try to update grub, since the 3rd drive is now having screwed up grub entries and cant boot, the machine firmware starts in UEFI mode and it will never reconcile.

I bet if I yank this non booting drive, stick into my boat PC, chroot into drive or use boot-repair, I can get it to boot.
Then I if I put back into this MSI bios PC, it will boot. Although I dont know if that EFI 512mb partition will interfere.

You know UEFI was created on Microsofts initiative as an attempt to stop Linux from being installed, although they would deny that.
I read plenty of negative things about how it would prevent people from installing Linux and it bit me too with this PC.

AFAIK only windows-tablets locked to secure boot, other mobos, notebooks and netbooks should allow legacy mode. And there is no "Enable legasy mode" setting, you have to disable secure boot, save changes and reboot and re-enter bios and then you should be able to activate old BIOS mode - it may be "CSM boot" or "CMS OS" option.

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No it wasn't. EFI was developed by Intel for their Itanium systems to counter BIOS limitations. Secure Boot was created to provide security to the boot process. In the early days, Microsoft implemented the latter without a great deal of consideration for how it would affect other operating systems, but it was never an "attempt to stop Linux from being installed".

If people run around seeing false threats all the time, they won't be able to tell when a real threat emerges.

will look for secure boot setting, but dont recall that, it would have triggered a response in me.

http://manualzz.com/doc/2406789/msi-...x--motherboard
Downloaded, did search dont see word 'secure'

And recorded a video of me browsing the bios menus.
Can you see it?
See anything about this setting?
https://goo.gl/photos/HjMbowsqDQCxXL2H7

from the manual under trusted computing says you can clear 'TPM' whatever that is.
But as i show in the video, that is a BLANK page in my bios.

Likely not UEFI related.
Maybe blank because no Microsoft OS has done any TPM devicelocking, so the bios has not been changed by windows. It is still a MS windows controlled world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module

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The standard firmware provided with that motherboard appears not to support EFI. Have you at any point updated the firmware?

Edit: I just found this post - http://reboot.pro/topic/16315-22tb-i...fi-with-winpe/ - which claims that the firmware chip does support an undocumented transitional EFI-like capability called "2.2TB Infinity" that doesn't really work. Try and find that capability in the BIOS and switch it off.

ok, I turned that 2.2 turbo infinity off, rebooted and still get the flashing white cursor.
Do I need to reinstall ubuntu?

it's an old mobo that doesn't support EFI, take a look at the BIOS date at the very bottom of the video: Copyright (C) 1985-2005.
There is no any EFI or secure boot related options. In 2005 EFI was not designed yet.
It's a traditional BIOS.

Regarding trusted computing - it's not a secure boot.

I would say it would be the easier solution, yes.

I don't know how your disk is set up. If you don't mind erasing anything that is on it already then select that option in the installer (the installer should set up MBR partitioning accordingly if it now believes you're booting from BIOS). If you already have the disk set up as MBR then you can probably use existing partitions. If the disk is set up as GPT then ensure first that you create a BIOS Boot Partition and flag it accordingly.

I can try reinstall, but I am trying something else right now.
I pulled the drive out and put it into the boat PC with a non UEFI bios.

Did not boot flashing cursor.
So I booted liveusb, then ran boot-repair, and got this error message.

I think I will install ubuntu on the boat PC, then yank drive put back into original PC and see if it boots.
If boots, then will reinstall again in the original pc and see if it boots.

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Wow, you know how to complicate things.

I have no idea what this "boat PC" is. The solution I offered only refers to booting your hard disk off the motherboard that you mentioned you are using, not another motherboard on another PC. You should get that working before you start transferring drives between PCs.

yes, boatpc is an entirely different PC , non UEFI most definitely.

So far nothing is working for installs, so this verifies the drive can boot, if it works.

The problem is that the drive may have an EFI grub installation which could cause it to fail on any drive booted from BIOS, or some form of corruption which could cause it to fail on any system. Given everything that you describe, if you don't need the data currently on the drive, I personally would re-partition it as MBR and reinstall Ubuntu on it, then see if that boots up on the machine you do that on.