Question New build takes me to Boot screen but not beyond

[LotW]

I have a Corsair iCue 5000X case, Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master, Intel 12900K CPU, and a MSI Geforce GTX 3090 ti Suprim X. I took the SSD with my operating syttem out of my old computer and plugged it into this one.

When I turn it on, I go to the boot screen(I thought it might start windows) so I went to Gigabyte's site and downloaded the newest bios and flashed the board. Starts and takes me to the Boot screen again.

What am I missing?

 

[GarbageCat028]

Its common for new builds to need a fresh install of windows. I have tried to boot with my old drive in a new build before and it wouldnt work. If it is taking you to the boot screen, which I assume shows you a list of bootable options including a drive, then you should be able to select the installed drive.

 

[LotW]

Interesting. I can see my SSD...but didn't know I had to select anything. I can find the USB stick with Windows 10;, but don't remember what to do after it's plugged in 😅 It's been about 6 years since my last build.

 

[LotW]

You might be right. It says, "No Bootable Device Found."

 

[GarbageCat028]

So you use your keyboard arrows and hit enter from the boot menu, if you are reinstalling windows you will see the thumb drive as an option, just hit enter to boot from it. If you cant find your win 10 drive you can create a new one with the microsoft tool here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-windows-99a58364-8c02-206f-aa6f-40c3b507420d

 

[LotW]

The install starts but I get "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks."

Which is strange because I was able to install from this USB drive to this SSD when I built my last pc.

 

[DavidM012]

Two articles: bish and bosh


So your old bios on your old rig was non-efi and windows installed in mbr mode whilst your new mobo is uefi and needs gpt. You can use minitool partition wizard to convert the disk partition from mbr to gpt.

Or else if you have no data on it, just delete all partitions and let windows setup do the rest.

 

[LotW]

That helped, at least initially. I got the new download of Windows and was able to get to the normal start but the resolution was incredibly low and couldn't be changed. I went to Gigabyte's website and started to update some of the firmware but then I lost internet connection and the light on the ethernet port went out. Not sure what happened so I restarted but it stayed in AD on the motherboard display. I can get into the Boot screen by pressing F12 at the very start of new power-on cycle but when I click on the bootable drive, it won't do anything. I reinserted the Windows USB and restarted thinking maybe something happened but it won't attempt to redownload.

I'm completely lost.

 

[DavidM012]

Don't try to update the firmware from windows. It isn't the recommended method.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by firmware or what you were doing. Do you mean, bios? Or were you simply trying to install drivers?

The preferred method to flash your bios: Your mobo should have a flashback port so you basically download the bios, put it on a fat32 formatted usb drive, rename the file to what the manual or website instructions tell you to, insert usb into flashback usb port and press the flashback button.

So basically what happened is you got windows to start and not all the new drivers for your rig are installed. Windows installs most of the system drivers automatically with plug and play (most of the time), and unloads the drivers from the old rig.


However I think first you should simply reset the cmos. Power off, and switch off the mains, clear the clear cmos jumper or remove the cr2032 coin battery for 30 seconds and put it back.

After that you should just be able to boot off your USB and run windows setup. Converting from mbr to gpt and then starting windows isn't the ideal way to install windows on the machine, for inexperienced users.

All the drivers from your old rig have to be unloaded from windows and the new ones installed. Windows doesn't automatically update the graphics drivers to the latest release only installs a generic vga driver and you get a low resolution.

If you can get windows setup to boot, run windows setup repair. That will sort out most of the driver situation then download your mobo and video card drivers latest version from the manufacturer's support website.

 

[LotW]

Just have a moment before I have to go to work but I'll respond the rest later. Firmware by the various drivers and such from Gigabyte's website. Drivers, LAN etc. I figured being up to date on everything would be better...After Aquantia LAN DRIVER [3.1.6.0] 0.MB 2022/06/21 it seemed to crap out.

 

[DavidM012]

You should just be able to boot off the usb and run windows setup.

Well yes reinstalling the LAN driver unloads the internet connection for a moment but it should only really blink off and on and if you were downloading anything then the connection would've been interrupted.

Since you're running a version of windows imported from another machine, maybe it's just bit muddled. You need to retrieve any data you want off your windows drive and ideally perform a clean install of windows: Windows 10 section of forum.

How you go about that, do you have another drive you can copy windows/users and documents to? Plus anything else you want to keep.

When you have backed up your data you can power off and remove the backup drives and run windows setup and delete the partitions on the windows installation target drive.