Whenever you are clean installing Windows or Linux distributions on your computer, it is important to know the firmware on which you are loading an operating system. In general, firmware can be either Legacy BIOS mode or the modern one i.e. UEFI. This presents four different ways that can help you to check if your Computer uses UEFI or BIOS.
Checking firmware also becomes important when you are thinking of dual boot on your PC. It could be installing Linux on a device already running with Windows OS or vice versa.
Should I dual boot Linux and Windows on two different firmware?
Though you can install two different operating systems on two different firmware, we suggest not doing that. This is because dual boot with two different firmware will only slow down your computer. So, check the current firmware on your computer by following these four ways and act accordingly.
Check if Your Computer Uses UEFI or BIOS
You may find the currently running firmware on your device by following either method discussed below –
1] Using Disk Management
This is the easiest of all four methods that we are going to see in the upcoming sections. Here’s how to know your firmware on Windows OS using Disk Management –
- Press Win + S to launch the Search window.
- Type “Disk manage” in the search bar and click on the top result i.e. Create and format hard disk partitions.
- On the Disk Management window, check what’s written inside the System Partition.
- If this displays “EFI”, your device is on the UEFI firmware.
- Similarly, if it shows System only without the EFI word, your device is booted using the BIOS Mode.
2] Through System Information
Windows 11/10 users may also get information about the firmware via System Information. All they need is to follow these steps on their devices –
- Click on the Search button and start typing “System“.
- Under Best match, you will see System Information on the top. Well, click on it.
- On the System Information window, scroll down to the BIOS mode under “Item” and check what’s there under the Value column.
- If there is “UEFI”, your device is booted using the UEFI firmware. In case your device is booted into the BIOS mode, you will see “Legacy” instead of “UEFI”.
3] Via Command Prompt
Using Command Prompt one can also detect what is the current firmware running on his/her device. All you require is to launch CMD as administrator and run the below command –
bcdedit | find "path"
- If the path displays
winload.efiin the end, your device is running on UEFI. - On the contrary, if this says “winload.exe”, your computer is running on the Legacy BIOS mode.
Alternatively, one may also copy/paste the command and press Enter to execute it –
bcdedit
Proceeding this way, you will also see the same result. However, this time you will be viewing Windows Boot Loader and Windows Boot Manager separately.
winload.efi suggests UEFI whereas winload.exe suggests BIOS
4] Via PowerShell
If you want to check the current firmware on your PC using Windows PowerShell, you may find it using that as well. For this, you need to start Windows PowerShell as administrator and run the below command –
$env:firmware_type
Note: In case you are on Windows 11, press Win + X, and choose Windows Terminal (Admin). The terminal will open into Windows PowerShell by default. Copy/paste the same code as provided above and see what it shows as the current firmware on your PC.
How do you find the current firmware on Linux?
Finding the currently running firmware on Linux is as easy as it was for Windows OS. All you require is to look for a folder i.e. /sys/firmware/efi. If you do find this folder, this means your device is currently installed on the UEFI firmware.
However, if you can’t find this folder inside the sys folder, this implies your device is running on Legacy BIOS mode.
Note: Debian and Ubuntu-based Linux users may find the existing firmware on their distros by installing this package – “efibootmgr“.
To install this package, open Terminal on your Linux device and run this code –
sudo apt install efibootmgr
After the installation completes, check the firmware by executing this code –
sudo efibootmgr
In case your device supports UEFI, you will get the relevant message. Else, you will simply see a message stating that – “EFI variables are not supported”.
That’s it, I hope you find this article useful to find the existing firmware on your system. If you do face difficulty following any section in this post, let’s know in the comment section.
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