Can UEFI settings brick new laptops?

See closed question - this is a less localised version of the same question.

Summary: changing CMS support in BIOS after attempting dual boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.10 bricked my laptop.

While looking into this today I came across this as well - that bug relates to Samsungs, but that model of Samsung has a very similar motherboard to my Asus, and similar problems were reported with Lenovo Ideapads.

There seems to be some way in which the interaction of OS installers with UEFI motherboards ends up bricking machines. Does anyone know why this might happen and how it can be avoided?

Solution 1:

That is impossible to answer as it stands. UEFI is a very new "standard", traditionally BIOSes (and similar setups) have only been tested with the Windows du jour, and used to break with strictly conforming use by Linux (and often still does, Linux has either talked some sense into the BIOS writers or has learnt to kludge around the worst offenders by now). So it is certainly possible that a non-standard UEFI configuration bricks the machine, though unlikely.

Before any experiments, check it there is a clear path for unbricking (or untying knots it might get tied into), ask your pal Google for experiences from others with the same machine (or whatever UEFI version is in the box). Check the documentation for whatever shim you want to use carefully.

[Probably overly paranoid...]