[SOLVED] Asus Z390-A Secure boot for win 11

[Philok]

After dissembling CSM. The samsung 970evo plus is no longer recognised as a boot drive. What to do or check?

 

[Colif]

re enable CSM

Its clear if your boot drive doesn't show with CSM disabled, you are using legacy instead of UEFI boot method
CSM - COmpatability Support Modules. They allow UEFI bios to emulate legacy

Are you just doing this now to be ready for win 11 or are you actively installing win 11?

If only getting ready, its not as simple as swapping that and I would just wait until win 11 is actually closer to release. No point messing with windows yet if you sure windows 11 will install later with just a few changes.


If you are trying to install win 11 now, and as an update instead of clean, you will need to confirm your Boot drives are MBR or GPT

I mean, if it doesn't boot with CSM off its a clue but just to confirm
in windows search for Command Prompt
right click the app result and choose more... and pick Run as admin
type diskpart and press enter
type list disk and press enter

If you have any GPT drives it will show an asterix under the GPT header

I assume C is MBR (lacks an asterix) and if you have more than 1 drive it probably helps to confirm you booting off C before you convert. If there had been 2 drives in pc when you installed windows there is a chance its put boot partition elsewhere.

You would need to run MBR2GPT to convert your drives and allow you to disable CSM and actually still boot off the NVME https://it-infrastructure.solutions/how-to-switch-from-legacy-to-uefi-boot-mode-mbr2gpt-convertion/

Easier option is to just clean install win 11 as it will auto install as UEFI and GPT and maybe turn on secure boot for you without any of this hassle.

Explanation of terms

Spoiler

UEFI - Unified extensible Firmware Interface

If your PC is less than 11 years old, you have a UEFI bios now

In 2006 or so Intel decided the bios as it was at time was too limited and needed to be replaced so that it supported newer technologies as they were invented
By about 2009 a consortium of hardware makers had combined to create UEFI standard

Old bios were limited, they didn't know what a mouse was for, so everything was keyboard driven
they weren't expandable, everything had to fit in a small amount of memory
they only supported Master Boot Record (MBR) which can only have 4 partitions per drive (there are tricks to get around this) and max drive size is 2.2 tb

UEFI bios overcame all the limitations of legacy bios (as it came to be called)
it supports mouse, it has a GUI so it looks better than previous bios could
Its expandable, it can be added to to grow as new hardware is created.
UEFI supports MBR & GPT Drives

GPT = GUID Partition Table
GUID = Global Unique ID = Every GPT drive on earth has a unique ID
GPT drives can have a max of 255 partitions on them
Max size of a GPT drive/partition is 18.8 Million TB

 

[Philok]

Than you Colif for your answer. You are right I am just doing this to be ready for Win 11.
Now I understand way I can not boot from my C drive, it have a MBR record. Until today I had no idé of the GPT.
Hopefully the update vill include the MBR2GPT tool, otherwise I now know how to do it by my self.

 

[Colif]

You could hope Microsoft would make it easier but it would be a change. They might but the means of doing the operation has existed for a few years now and they haven't yet. I suspect they won't but you know how now.

Easiest way to do it still a clean install of win 11. Tool could go wrong and leave you with no data so always ideal to have backups somewhere.

if you know you need to convert to GPT when Win 11 is released, I would copy anything you need to save off your hard drive and do a clean install of Win 11 when its released. If you turn off CSM at same time as booting off the Installer USB, the PC is going to insist on GPT anyway. If you delete all the partitions on the drive at same time, it will recreate the ones it needs. Its all part of the install process

its unclear if you actually need Secure boot enabled, my pc doesn't and yet tool said I could install it. But having it capable of running it is at least a step in the right direction. They might insist on having it on by time its due for launch.

We will have guides on how to clean install. We have a win 10 one now and its likely the only changes will be visual between how you install it and 11. They just changed a few screens.

If its anything like the 7 to 10 upgrade process you will likely have to update to 11 and then you can clean install. It might let you use 10 license key but most of us don't know what ours is. So we shall see. 7 to 10 converted license to a 10 one, so expect similar this time.