[SOLVED] BIOS change from Legacy to UEFI confused

[OnlyAlex]

Hi everyone, I am a bit of a noob when it comes to PCs so apologies in advance. Could really do with some help guys.

I have a 5 year old PC built by Overclockers and it was in Legacy BIOS - MBR. About two months ago I saw Windows 11 will require the PC to be in UEFI mode. I played with some settings and mucked up the PC so took it to a PC repair shop and asked them to install Windows 10 again as UEFI. They mucked this up and didn't do it properly and then finally managed to do it but Windows was playing up until I created a new user account, (searching for Windows settings didn't show any results).

I have started to learn more about UEFI and Legacy and note that in my BIOS CSM is STILL enabled with boot device control being UEFI and legacy OPROM and legacy only for network and storage. As well as this the secure boot type is selected as other OS rather than Windows UEFI mode.

Should I be concerned? Reason I started to look was my PC takes 13 seconds to boot, not sure if that is normal or not and I wanted to enable fast boot up which I did in control panel but when booting the circular ring shows which means it's not working properly?

Sorry if this is all over the place. Any advice appreciated. I checked sys info, CMD and it definitely says UEFI rather than legacy and is GPT.

Cheers!

 

[SuperIronOut]

There are a lot of variables that come into play when moving from legacy BIOS to UEFI. The boot device needs to formatted as GPT, you can find out the current format by opening command prompt as admin and typing

diskpart

. Once it has loaded, type

list disk

; if it is formatted as GPT it should have a star under GPT located on the far right of the output that was generated from the command. If you have multiple storage devices in your PC your boot device is generally going to be disk 0.

Windows will also have to be installed as UEFI which can be created using the Media Creation Tool from Windows, there are several guides on the subject.
To find out the current boot mode, you can use the HWiNFO tool, or you can type in msinfo32 on your taskbar's search box, or open the run window by pressing the Windows key + r and typing: msinfo32 which will display the current boot mode on the System Summary page.

CSM must be disabled for full UEFI functionality, but in order to disable CSM you need to know if your PC has anything that requires legacy BIOS. Let's say you have a UEFI supported processor but it does not have integrated graphics, then you need to make sure your discreet GPU supports UEFI booting, if it does not then CSM must be enabled. You can find out if your GPU supports UEFI booting using GPU-Z, or HWiNFO to name a few; both of these tools are free.

You must also have a TPM which is required for Secure Boot, this can either be discreet, or firmware based. Most modern processors include support for a firmware TPM. If you're processor does not support this, you'll have to buy a discreet TPM that plugs into your motherboard.

 

[SuperIronOut]

A 13 second boot time is not bad at all, and in my opinion I don't think there is reason for concern. Microsoft provides a tool that will check if your PC is Windows 11 ready. If it is, you will be able to install the Windows 11 preview. I personally don't think it's worth it at this point in time to install Windows 11, but your needs may be different.

 

[OnlyAlex]

There are a lot of variables that come into play when moving from legacy BIOS to UEFI. The boot device needs to formatted as GPT, you can find out the current format by opening command prompt as admin and typing

diskpart

. Once it has loaded, type

list disk

; if it is formatted as GPT it should have a star under GPT located on the far right of the output that was generated from the command. If you have multiple storage devices in your PC your boot device is generally going to be disk 0.

Windows will also have to be installed as UEFI which can be created using the Media Creation Tool from Windows, there are several guides on the subject.
To find out the current boot mode, you can use the HWiNFO tool, or you can type in msinfo32 on your taskbar's search box, or open the run window by pressing the Windows key + r and typing: msinfo32 which will display the current boot mode on the System Summary page.

CSM must be disabled for full UEFI functionality, but in order to disable CSM you need to know if your PC has anything that requires legacy BIOS. Let's say you have a UEFI supported processor but it does not have integrated graphics, then you need to make sure your discreet GPU supports UEFI booting, if it does not then CSM must be enabled. You can find out if your GPU supports UEFI booting using GPU-Z, or HWiNFO to name a few; both of these tools are free.

You must also have a TPM which is required for Secure Boot, this can either be discreet, or firmware based. Most modern processors include support for a firmware TPM. If you're processor does not support this, you'll have to buy a discreet TPM that plugs into your motherboard.

Hey, thank you so much for explaining this.

So I have done all of the checks you kindly suggested and here are the results:

Using CMD to check format of disk 'Disk 0' has a star under GPT, Disk 1 does not.
i used HWINFO tool and this said under motherboard that UFEI is green and for the GPU OS is UEFI Boot with TPM also in green, but Secure Boots in red.
BIOS mode on msinfo32 says UEFI
I am not sure if CPU is supported, it is an AMD Ryzen 7 1700.

I know the CPU isn't supported for Windows 11, so I am looking to replace that with a newer AMD Ryzen 7 gen.

When I check the PC Health Check it doesn't say anything about UEFI but just that it supports secure boot state and the only thing it fails is the CPU.

Do you think it's safe to turn off CSM ? Should I also change boot from network and storage from legacy only to UEFI?
Finally, do you think it's sage to change Other OS to Windows UEFI mode?

If it all went wrong, would the BIOS not work and would I be stuck?

Edit: also just checked in device manager and my back up SSD - disk 1 is MBR. Is this a problem?

Cheers for all the help!

 

[Buljic]

Ok, a few things more to add here.
Disk 0 is probably a "boot" disk, so it's formatted as GPT. Other disks in UEFI-based systems don't need to be formatted as GPT, although it's recommended. Since you don't have * under disk 1, it's MBR, and that won't stop you to install windows 11 as long as you don't try to install windows on that disk. With that said, you can leave disk 1 as MBR but then only install windows on disk 0 since it's GPT.

PC Health Check app does not say anything about UEFI\Legacy boot, but one parameter does. Secure boot. Secure boot is only available when the system performs full UEFI boot. Otherwise, secure boot state will be unsupported. You can check all these informations on sysinfo page. In your case CSM is emulating UEFI boot, I think you will be fine by turning off CSM and setting boot as Windows UEFI and also set Secure Boot to Enabled. PK or Platform key "Enroled", if you have that option.

P.S.
I would wait with the whole install windows 11 and upgrade CPU thing since Microsoft will probably add support for zen 1 and intel 7th at some point.
Only real big thing to end-users is the new MS Store, which is coming to Windows 10, so...

 

[OnlyAlex]

Ok, a few things more to add here.
Disk 0 is probably a "boot" disk, so it's formatted as GPT. Other disks in UEFI-based systems don't need to be formatted as GPT, although it's recommended. Since you don't have * under disk 1, it's MBR, and that won't stop you to install windows 11 as long as you don't try to install windows on that disk. With that said, you can leave disk 1 as MBR but then only install windows on disk 0 since it's GPT.

PC Health Check app does not say anything about UEFI\Legacy boot, but one parameter does. Secure boot. Secure boot is only available when the system performs full UEFI boot. Otherwise, secure boot state will be unsupported. You can check all these informations on sysinfo page. In your case CSM is emulating UEFI boot, I think you will be fine by turning off CSM and setting boot as Windows UEFI and also set Secure Boot to Enabled. PK or Platform key "Enroled", if you have that option.

P.S.
I would wait with the whole install windows 11 and upgrade CPU thing since Microsoft will probably add support for zen 1 and intel 7th at some point.
Only real big thing to end-users is the new MS Store, which is coming to Windows 10, so...

Thank you so much for this. Really helpful! I didn't know it was coming to Windows 10, that's great.

I have turned off CSM and changed other OS to Windows UEFI mode and it's turned on and boot time was cuts from 12 seconds to 8 seconds which is good and secure boot is now enabled, it's green on HWINFO64 and on sysinfo page.

Only thing is when BIOS boots it boots onto 2nd monitor and then when OS loads it jumps back on to my main monitor on the right. Is there anything I can do to change this? I have my main monitor plugged in as HDMI on the right and made this primary screen and 2nd monitor plugged in as VGA. Do you know how to resolve this? Cheers for the help.

 

[Buljic]

Really not sure about this one. You should check bios settings for this. Honestly, I even wouldn't care much about that. If it jumps after POST, it's fine.
Glad I helped out. mod edit, don't beg for best answers
Cheers

 

[OnlyAlex]

Really not sure about this one. You should check bios settings for this. Honestly, I even wouldn't care much about that. If it jumps after POST, it's fine.
Glad I helped out. If you found my post helpful, please check the trophy on it
Cheers

Done, thank you so much!

 

[SuperIronOut]

What GPU do you have? Which motherboard?

 

[SuperIronOut]

If you would like to convert disk 1 to GPT: There is a feature for converting disk to GPT without data loss or having to do a clean install, but just to be safe make sure you back everything up. You can use it while fully booted by typing in the following in an elevated command prompt:
First, validate the disk and confirm it is ready for GPT by typing:

mbr2gpt /validate /disk:1 /allowfullOS

If it is successful, then you can proceed to the conversion with:

mbr2gpt /convert /disk:1 /allowfullOS

Alternatively you can do it from a recovery environment with

mbr2gpt /convert /disk:1

.
You can also convert with diskpart (beware: this option will wipe disk 1). Open an elevated command prompt again and type the following:

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
convert gpt

 

[SuperIronOut]

No need for apologies

I'm not sure which processor you currently have installed, but in the event that it does have integrated graphics included, you can try disabling them in order to stop it from switching during boot, however if your discreet GPU requires CSM enabled to boot using it, then it will fail to boot without the integrated graphics or CSM enabled.
It won't cause any harm to attempt this and the system should automatically re-enable CSM or the integrated graphics after displaying an error on screen which should tell you which action was taken. After this event you can disable CSM again and enable the integrated graphics (if they exist) for your processor in order to continue on with CSM disabled. The majority of AMD processors do not have this feature.

In my opinion I'd say the benefits of having CSM disabled outweigh the boot issue which is mostly cosmetic; CSM basically leaves you with a legacy BIOS that only looks like a UEFI. With that being said, if you aren't using them for the second monitor to reduce the load on your GPU and they aren't needed to boot with CSM disabled, then integrated graphics should be disabled anyway if your GPU that has both monitors connected through it.

 

[OnlyAlex]

No need for apologies

I'm not sure which processor you currently have installed, but in the event that it does have integrated graphics included, you can try disabling them in order to stop it from switching during boot, however if your discreet GPU requires CSM enabled to boot using it, then it will fail to boot without the integrated graphics or CSM enabled.
It won't cause any harm to attempt this and the system should automatically re-enable CSM or the integrated graphics after displaying an error on screen which should tell you which action was taken. After this event you can disable CSM again and enable the integrated graphics (if they exist) for your processor in order to continue on with CSM disabled. The majority of AMD processors do not have this feature.

In my opinion I'd say the benefits of having CSM disabled outweigh the boot issue which is mostly cosmetic; CSM basically leaves you with a legacy BIOS that only looks like a UEFI. With that being said, if you aren't using them for the second monitor to reduce the load on your GPU and they aren't needed to boot with CSM disabled, then integrated graphics should be disabled anyway if your GPU that has both monitors connected through it.

Thank you, I have a Ryzen 7 1700 CPU and GPU I have GeForce 9TX 980ti. I understand that my ASUS Prime B350 will select DVI / VGA first before HDMI and that I cannot change the boot load? What I have done and it might be really basic, but has fixed the issue is swapping the cables around. So the VGA is now plugged in on the monitor I use as main and then HDMI on the alternate monitor, does that make sense?

 

[SuperIronOut]

Looks like you found your solution! I was unaware of ASUS boards doing this, I'm curious if this is the case with B570's. I'm glad everything seems to have worked out, and thank you Buljic for adding useful information to my post.