New motherboard not working

Windows11 requires TPM and a few other things to be present at motherboard level, which server boards may not have. Your choices are probably Windows10 or Windows Server
 
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octafish said:
So after a bit of experimentation in the BIOS I found the boot option was set to network first, which is probably why it was hanging. Instead selected the USB media as boot device. And lo and behold, the W11 installation popup appeared. Set the language options and a product key and it went away checking and came back and said 'this PC is not ready for Windows11' or similar.

Not sure what to do next... why would a brand new motherboard and Xeons be 'not suitable'? Is there a way of fixing it or is it really the case that W11 is a waste of time?
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Server boards like this are often running Linux or somethin', you may need to manually enable whatever features are required in the BIOS, usually TPM and secure boot. Your board does have a TPM header if the CPU doesn't have a firmware option, but from what I can see in the manual it does have these features.
 
Yes its probably complaining about TPM, oh well W10 will do. It's a bit illogical of MS to end of life W10 if its required by new PCs...

But I have another problem. Although the BIOS sees the NVMe devices, the WIndows installer does not. If I open a cmd window and use diskpart, there is no sign of the NVMe's - so I can't install an OS. Well, I can on one of the old SATA drives that are present, but they are old, smaller drives. Why would the windows installer not see the NVMe's???
 
octafish said:
But I have another problem. Although the BIOS sees the NVMe devices, the WIndows installer does not. If I open a cmd window and use diskpart, there is no sign of the NVMe's - so I can't install an OS. Well, I can on one of the old SATA drives that are present, but they are old, smaller drives. Why would the windows installer not see the NVMe's???
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Sounds like either you have CSM enabled, or they're formatted to MBR, since this is another joy of Windows 11.

Windows 11 can only install to GPT.
 
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No this is with the W10 installer... I'm wondering if the vanilla W10 install has drivers for the NVMe devices? I've a Crucial T700 and a Samsung 990 NVMe drives.
 
octafish said:
Yes its probably complaining about TPM, oh well W10 will do. It's a bit illogical of MS to end of life W10 if its required by new PCs...

But I have another problem. Although the BIOS sees the NVMe devices, the WIndows installer does not. If I open a cmd window and use diskpart, there is no sign of the NVMe's - so I can't install an OS. Well, I can on one of the old SATA drives that are present, but they are old, smaller drives. Why would the windows installer not see the NVMe's???
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It's not required by new PCs. All recent desktop motherboards and CPUs are compatible. You've got a server motherboard and CPUs.

Yes, sounds like you'll need to download the NVMe drivers from Intel - probably what they call Intel Rapid Storage.
 
Hmm finding what's needed isn't easy. There are drivers on Crucial's site but they don't appear to be suitable. ANd on Intel's download page I see stuff for Optane but not vanilla SSDs.

I installed Windows 10 on my current server a few years ago (Asus motherboard and twin E5-2640's) on a NVMe drive without a hitch. Which is why I'm puzzled there is an issue now...
 
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Some progress!

Firstly I used 'rufus' to prepare a Windows11 bootable USB which will allow booting without the TPM etc. requirements.
That alone did not work, needed to make the NVMe's visible, the solution was a well hidden option 'AUTOVMD' in the BIOS. Disabling this option allowed Windows installer to see the NVMe disks. No idea what this option is but it needs to be disabled!

With one of the two 2Tb disks as install target, the install could proceed... it got through the first pass, rebooted and then (after a worrisome pause) presented a screen with 3 boot options - W10 and two W11 choices. Where did it get that from? Selected one of the W11 options and another reboot, and then a different (black and white) installing screen.

And finally... the Windows11 screen! Still not seeing the wired network or indeed the 2 ethernet adapters, need to figure that one out.
 
Well the saga doesn't stop... despite being able to install Windows 11 and starting the restore of backed up data, I'm running into BSOD problems.

Symptoms are:
- the PC gets slower and slower, expecially windows GUI related stuff having severe lags e.g. to redraw a file explorer window.
- copying or unzipping large numbers of files gets progressively slower and slower until the GUI pretty much freezes and then a BSOD with an error 'a critical process has died' occurs.
- during this time the cpus are lightly loaded - no more than 5% - and the CPU temperatures are less than 50C.
- the event viewer shows nothing much apart from warnings along the lines of "a corrected hardware error has occurred", something to do with a PCI express device.

I've tried running memtest86 which hasn't spotted anything, run sfc etc. Could it be the C drive - yet chkdsk finds nothing?
 
octafish said:
presented a screen with 3 boot options - W10 and two W11 choices. Where did it get that from?
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Every time you start an install, Windows creates a hidden recovery partition, which will not be removed unless you use DISKPART to remove it fully.


Feels like a driver issue - either Network or Storage. Look in the Event Log for clues as to what causes the crash.

Support page here:

Z13PE-D16

ASUS Z13PE-D16 server motherboard for dual 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, with single-CPU support for three PCIe cards, 16 DIMM DDR5, dual M.2 and integrated ASUS ASMB11-iKVM.
servers.asus.com servers.asus.com

- Is everything you have compatible? (Memory / Device Support)
- Did you install the Intel and other chipset drivers etc from Asus website? (Drivers and Tools). Try the latest Intel ones too (https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...s-and-systems-based-on-intel-741-chipset.html)



It's sounding more and more like you should be using Windows Server or Linux, not a desktop OS on this motherboard. Using Windows11 with no TPM will cause you problems with any updates anyway.
 
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I actually got a TPM module for Asus on Amazon, fitted it and PC Health Check says its W11 ready now - all boxes ticked.
I'm going to try a fresh install on an unused NVMe. Will check the drivers for everything too - think there are a couple of PCIe cards that came with driver CDROMs.

But yes, I'm beginning to wonder if I should just install Linux and be done with it. I've also a feeling I'm going to have to water cool the two Xeons which will be another fun job, not.
 
I'm getting very close to have a workable W11 installation. In fact, its mostly working now. Having downloaded all the Asus drivers for the Z13PE-D16 motherboard, initially I tried running them from the setup programs in W11. This did not work as the installers said windows server only... However, by going into Device Manager and manually installing drivers wherever one appeared missing, it was possible to install them. For some reason all 128 cores needed their own driver install, ugh.

I was left with just warnings about drivers for a USB hub (not very important at this stage) and the MS display adapter. Will drivers there, the dreaded BSOD for a critical process dying has gone away.

I'm left with a couple of issues:
- Anything to do with the GUI is a bit slow. I suspect this is due to graphics using the MS display adapter.
- Trying to install the NVidia driver for the GTX1080 GPU seems to work until it tries to use it, then I just get a black screen. I'm a bit lost as to what may be the cause, CPUZ does nto see the GPU which is odd.

Anyway I hope I'm not boring people with this saga, ny advice if you're thinking of building a Xeon PC is... don't!
 
covenantuk said:
Windows11 requires TPM and a few other things to be present at motherboard level, which server boards may not have. Your choices are probably Windows10 or Windows Server
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FWIW, you can use Rufus to create your Windows installation USB drive with an option to bypass TPM checks on install. It's not a hard requirement for Windows11, it's just a configurable check that's on by default. The risk though is you may not be eligible for certain unspecified future updates.

Some boards have a TPM connector on the motherboard and TPM 2.0 add-on boards used to be fairly cheap
 
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hellarda said:
Sorry to hijack this - @octafish how are you getting on with this board now? I'm possibly looking at doing a build based around it.
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I would say unless you're planning to run Windows Server or Linux, which are the only two platforms Asus says it supports for this mobo, then forget it. Windows 10/11 do not appear to work correctly and Asus are of no use at all with technical support.
 
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