Issues booting with Asus Prime Z270-P

Stubbsy · 13 Nov 2018 at 13:51

Hi,
I had a stable setup for a long time, but recently wanted to go into the BIOS to stop USB charging while the machine was off. Discovered that whatever I did, I couldn't get into the BIOS. If i did a power cycle, held DEL or F2 or F12 whatever, nothing would do it. I had Fast Boot enabled in the BIOS but still, it should have worked. So i tried flashing the BIOS with the tools from the ASUS website and that didn't work - it just kept booting into Windows.
Anyway, whether I was being stupid or not is a bit of a moot point, because I cleared the CMOS this morning to get into a fresh BIOS.

Only problem is now that the machine won't boot by itself. I have to go into the BIOS and use the "Boot Selector" menu each time to select something called "Windows Boot Manager" (which I assume is a partition on my system disk, made by my windows installer). If I set this as the 1st boot priority, it doesn't work. I turn the machine on, and it just sits there with the fans whirring, and no display, forever. So i power cycle it and then it lets my go into the BIOS where I can select this boot option (by clicking), and then it works.... I just don't get it. If I've got a BIOS setting really wrong then surely it shouldn't boot into Windows at all? :confused:

Don't have any beep codes because my case doesn't have a speaker but might be worth getting one maybe?

TangoEchoAlpha · 16 Nov 2018 at 12:50

Hi @Stubbsy - are you still having this problem? I've updated my X99-A to the latest non-beta BIOS and I am having a similar issue - first time I switch the PC on or do a hard reset, the system seems to not find my boot drive (in my case, a Samsung M2 NVMe drive) and I have to go into the BIOS like you to get it to boot properly.

If I don't do that, I get a Windows BSOD saying that the boot loader couldn't be found, but that's just a red herring as the new BIOS seems to not pickup all of the attached storage upon first 'boot'.

To be honest, I've been thinking of upgrading for quite a while and not likely to invest much time in trying to sort it out.

Stubbsy · 17 Nov 2018 at 07:17

Hi @TangoEchoAlpha , yes I still have this issue. Have been changing settings in the BIOS one by one but nothing seems to cure it. I assume that if I ran windows setup again it would cure it but I'm not in a position to try that. It's very frustrating.

TangoEchoAlpha · 17 Nov 2018 at 14:43

Stubbsy said:
Hi @TangoEchoAlpha , yes I still have this issue. Have been changing settings in the BIOS one by one but nothing seems to cure it. I assume that if I ran windows setup again it would cure it but I'm not in a position to try that. It's very frustrating.

Indeed. I suspect that running a Windows repair to re-write the Windows Boot Manager might do it, but I've got a Ryzen upgrade on order so don't intend to spend time on it. I'm sure it has something to do with the BIOS upgrade we've both done.