Question PC goes straight to BIOS?

[Kainoa110]

I just built this about a month ago using all brand new parts. My PC goes straight into BIOS now after working for the past month with zero issues. EZ mode doesn’t detect any drives in the boot priority section but when I go into advanced and look at my SATA and NVMe configuration they are being read or at least show up there. I’m not sure what to do about it.



Full Specs:

CPU: Ryzen 5 5600x

GPU: Gigabyte RTX 3070

MOBO: ROG Strix B550-F Gaming (Wi-Fi)

PSU: MSi Mag A750GL PCIe5

Memory: XPG Spectrix D35G DDR4 2x8 3200mhz CL16

Storage: PNY CS900 500GB SATA III SSD (this has my windows installation on it)

Crucial P3 1TB NVMe m.2 SSD

 

[Kainoa110]

Update: I tried resetting the BIOS by removing the CMOS battery and putting it back in but nothing changed. I tried plugging in my USB drive with a windows install on it and my drives are being properly read with accurate numbers but when I click on the drive that already has windows installed on it, it says “Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, windows can only be installed to GPT disks.” I don’t know if that means anything but just thought I should share that information just in case. Updating the BIOS didn’t do anything.

 

[CountMike]

Update: I tried resetting the BIOS by removing the CMOS battery and putting it back in but nothing changed. I tried plugging in my USB drive with a windows install on it and my drives are being properly read with accurate numbers but when I click on the drive that already has windows installed on it, it says “Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, windows can only be installed to GPT disks.” I don’t know if that means anything but just thought I should share that information just in case. Updating the BIOS didn’t do anything.

That means a lot, set BIOS to CSM (Legacy mode) and try like that,

 

[Moonstick2]

To explain more, UEFI and Legacy BIOS are two methods of getting your computer started. MBR and GPT are two types of boot disk, which is what lets you actually do something useful with your computer once it's on.

(Technically UEFI and BIOS are different things, but convention has a lot of people refer to UEFI as a BIOS, so I'll just say UEFI and Legacy instead.)

Put simply. Legacy + MBR is old, UEFI + GPT is modern. You can't run Legacy + GPT or UEFI + MBR.

A computer like yours should have been configured as UEFI + GPT but it sounds like it's been set up as Legacy + MBR. It's now in UEFI mode so won't let you boot from an MBR disk or install Windows to it as MBR. What I couldn't say is if the start of your problems was it going to UEFI for some unknown reason or if it's only in UEFI now because you did the CMOS battery thing and there was some other problem originally.

As above, you can try going into the Boot section and enabling CSM (Compatibility Support Mode) and rebooting, and see if it works then.

You may find that CSM is greyed out. If this is the case, for your motherboard it means it's because it's trying to use integrated graphics. Since you're presumably using a connection to the GPU, it might be that both are enabled: go to Graphics Configuration and select Primary Display as Auto or PCIE while disabling iGPU Multi Monitor.

If you can't get CSM enabled, or you can but it still won't boot, and you're happy to reinstall Windows (this will delete any data on the disk of course!) then you can convert the disk to GPT by following suitable instructions, e.g. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-uk/000137854/converting-your-hard-drive-from-mbr-to-gpt

 

[Kainoa110]

To explain more, UEFI and Legacy BIOS are two methods of getting your computer started. MBR and GPT are two types of boot disk, which is what lets you actually do something useful with your computer once it's on.

(Technically UEFI and BIOS are different things, but convention has a lot of people refer to UEFI as a BIOS, so I'll just say UEFI and Legacy instead.)

Put simply. Legacy + MBR is old, UEFI + GPT is modern. You can't run Legacy + GPT or UEFI + MBR.

A computer like yours should have been configured as UEFI + GPT but it sounds like it's been set up as Legacy + MBR. It's now in UEFI mode so won't let you boot from an MBR disk or install Windows to it as MBR. What I couldn't say is if the start of your problems was it going to UEFI for some unknown reason or if it's only in UEFI now because you did the CMOS battery thing and there was some other problem originally.

As above, you can try going into the Boot section and enabling CSM (Compatibility Support Mode) and rebooting, and see if it works then.

You may find that CSM is greyed out. If this is the case, for your motherboard it means it's because it's trying to use integrated graphics. Since you're presumably using a connection to the GPU, it might be that both are enabled: go to Graphics Configuration and select Primary Display as Auto or PCIE while disabling iGPU Multi Monitor.

If you can't get CSM enabled, or you can but it still won't boot, and you're happy to reinstall Windows (this will delete any data on the disk of course!) then you can convert the disk to GPT by following suitable instructions, e.g. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-uk/000137854/converting-your-hard-drive-from-mbr-to-gpt

Changing it worked but I’m curious as to why that happened? Like for the past month the computer was working perfectly fine and I turn it off one day and don’t use it for a day or two then when I tried to turn it back on it stopped working. Why is that? I never touched or changed anything between that time

 

[Blackink]

To explain more, UEFI and Legacy BIOS are two methods of getting your computer started. MBR and GPT are two types of boot disk, which is what lets you actually do something useful with your computer once it's on.

(Technically UEFI and BIOS are different things, but convention has a lot of people refer to UEFI as a BIOS, so I'll just say UEFI and Legacy instead.)

Put simply. Legacy + MBR is old, UEFI + GPT is modern. You can't run Legacy + GPT or UEFI + MBR.

A computer like yours should have been configured as UEFI + GPT but it sounds like it's been set up as Legacy + MBR. It's now in UEFI mode so won't let you boot from an MBR disk or install Windows to it as MBR. What I couldn't say is if the start of your problems was it going to UEFI for some unknown reason or if it's only in UEFI now because you did the CMOS battery thing and there was some other problem originally.

As above, you can try going into the Boot section and enabling CSM (Compatibility Support Mode) and rebooting, and see if it works then.

You may find that CSM is greyed out. If this is the case, for your motherboard it means it's because it's trying to use integrated graphics. Since you're presumably using a connection to the GPU, it might be that both are enabled: go to Graphics Configuration and select Primary Display as Auto or PCIE while disabling iGPU Multi Monitor.

If you can't get CSM enabled, or you can but it still won't boot, and you're happy to reinstall Windows (this will delete any data on the disk of course!) then you can convert the disk to GPT by following suitable instructions, e.g. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-uk/000137854/converting-your-hard-drive-from-mbr-to-gpt

This was a great explanation!! And it looks like it solved the OP's problem.

 

[Moonstick2]

Changing it worked but I’m curious as to why that happened? Like for the past month the computer was working perfectly fine and I turn it off one day and don’t use it for a day or two then when I tried to turn it back on it stopped working. Why is that? I never touched or changed anything between that time

Unless it keeps happening, it's going to be down to being Just One Of Those Things. Glad it got sorted painlessly anyway!