Hello @stesofeu,
Sorry for the delay (busy week at work).
For the installation of refind bootloader you will need to modify your EFI partition. That is something that could make your drive unbootable but could be solved by reinstalling the stock bootloader from Linux LiveCD or Windows Recovery image.
Regarding the SwitchNow.exe, the same functionality can be achieved changing some EFI variables. This can be more dangerous and get your system unbootable. I have messed it up multiple times on mine and it seems that when the tablet cannot boot because of these variables the whole BIOS is reset automatically to default solving the issue, but it could be different on your device.
In order to enable the stock boot menu without SwitchNOW.exe you have to modify the BootSelectVariable-944fb13b-773f-4cbb-9c6f-326cebde4c23 from Linux. It could also be done from EFI shell but as you already have Linux Mint installed it will be easier from Linux.
- To view the contents of this variable type the following command:
hexdump -C /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/BootSelectVariable-944fb13b-773f-4cbb-9c6f-326cebde4c23
It will print something like this:
00000000 07 00 00 00 38 04 00 00
The interesting byte is the one with value 04. When set to 00, the boot selection is disabled.
- To disable the boot menu and boot Linux (the binary at EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi actually. It could be Linux or refind bootloader):
sudo -s
chattr -i /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/BootSelectVariable-944fb13b-773f-4cbb-9c6f-326cebde4c23
printf '\x07\x00\x00\x00\x38\x00\x00\x00' > /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/BootSelectVariable-944fb13b-773f-4cbb-9c6f-326cebde4c23
- To enable the boot menu:
sudo -s
chattr -i /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/BootSelectVariable-944fb13b-773f-4cbb-9c6f-326cebde4c23
printf '\x07\x00\x00\x00\x38\x04\x00\x00' > /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/BootSelectVariable-944fb13b-773f-4cbb-9c6f-326cebde4c23
Before doing any change I would suggest to use the hexdump command to check the current value of your efi variable (hexdump -C /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/BootSelectVariable-944fb13b-773f-4cbb-9c6f-326cebde4c23) and see if it is similar to mine.