18

My BIOS offers me the option to launch an EFI shell, but I have no idea what that is. Does it allow me to turn on CPU flags like VT-x or something similar? Why would I want to use it?

Brad Patton
  • 10,668
Flame_Phoenix
  • 547

1 Answers1

20

The EFI Shell is a "shell" (think of a command prompt or a terminal shell) that a (U)EFI BIOS can boot directly into (instead of your OS), allowing control and scripting of many items including booting scenarios.

Installing an EFI shell in an "EFI System" partition (type EF00) formatted with a VFAT file system and properly named shellx64.efi for a 64-bit system will allow you to boot directly into it from your BIOS.

See Basic Instructions for Using the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI)] (PDF)

Justinas Dūdėnas
  • 628