i cannot reinstall win 10 on another hard drive

[thefinest1]

hi all

I'm not sure if this is a motherboard issue or a windows 10 issue.

I will try to be concise as I can:

I recently upgraded my PC. upgrade:

asus H110 m-a motherboard
8gb DDR4 ram
Kaby lake intel CPU
520w PSU
Seagate 1TB

install went smooth including win 10. but here is my issue:

after clearing out my old WD 320gb hard drive which had win 7 on it. I decided that I would rather have win 10 running on that drive and using my new 1TB for storage.

I disconnected all drives so only the WD one was in there and I put the USB with the WIN 10 installer in. now this is the strange thing. the bios detected the hard drive, but it did not detect the USB. I went into boot options and there was not option to boot from USB!

after trying to diagnose this I gave up and put the Seagate 1TB back in which had the previous install of WIN 10. in the bios, still no option to boot from USB.

so how can I do a fresh install onto the 320gb hard drive ? and why does the BIOS not recognise the USB? it did before when I installed win 10 first time round?

thanks in advance

 

[Colif]

Your manual

have a look in bios Boot menu,turn off fast boot as its likely it ignores all USB except kb/mouse at start up. Might also need to turn secure boot off for same reason.

Did you put USB in boot priority list?

Did you create the installer yourself and if so, what did you use to do it?

 

[thefinest1]

thanks for your response

I made the installer from my wifes windows 10 laptop and the Microsoft website. it worked the first time round.

yes I did turn off fast boot

the USB doesn't even show up in the boot list!

I double checked the internal USB connector was connected properly which it is

 

[Colif]

shouldn't make any difference but try putting USB into a slot before starting PC, have you tried slots on back of PC? front connectors may not work (though they should). Try USB 2 clots as well.

I think it could be cause you had win 7 on it and might have Compatability Support Modules on. its a menu on bottom of Boot menu.

Win 7 & Win 10 boot differently, win 7 uses legacy boot whereas Win 10 uses UEFI. If your manual was more detailed I could probably find where the changes are to be made. Unless you have a setting somewhere that blocks UEFI USB from showing.

You could try resetting defaults on bios as it should reset itself to UEFI as I expect that is default now.

 

[thefinest1]

I formatted the old win 7 drive in win 10 disk management so shouldn't have anything on it.

This is my MB

https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/H110M-A/

 

[Colif]

i mean the bios is set up to boot using windows 7. If/When you installed Win 7 on board the first time, you would have had to turn on CSM (though I think its on by default). CSM = Compatability Support Modules, its a menu at bottom of Boot tab in bios. It could be set to ignore UEFI which is why the USB isn't showing in boot options. would have also turned off secure boot. If you didn't build PC, I would ask those that did.

I blame Asus for having too many models with all the same codes - It doesn't change a lot as the manuals are almost identical and don't tell me enough about what to find in CSM menu

This might seem odd but if you look on page 2-51 of the Asus Z170 manual you will see that it actually displays what the choices mean under boot menu menu are. On page 2-54 it shows the choices in the CSM menu and it should be set to enabled by default. If its anything else, change it.

its a bit stingy to show all the choices in the Z series motherboard manual and ah heck all in the non Z motherboards.

 

[Colif]

Since you updated from win 7 to 10, Win 10 was happy to use the boot method that Win 7 uses which is called Legacy (or CSM in Asus terms). If, however, you fresh install win 10 on a PC it knows has an UEFI bios, it will insist on using UEFI boot method

I suspect your PC set up to use CSM and that is why its not showing USB as a choice. I am not sure though as it seems odd.

what shows in the F8 menu at boot? should be boot list. can you show screenshot?

if you enable fast boot, can you also enable Full initialization in the USB menu under it? that might help

 

[thefinest1]

No I didn't install win 7 on this motherboard, only win 10. I didn't have to adjust anything first time round it picked up the USB installer straight away. Strange it doesn't pick it up. What would happen if I was changing the hard drive if a situation arose that the hard drive failed?

Boot menu doesn't show much I will grab a screenshot

 

[Colif]

hmm... i need to read more. i didn't see it was a new PC. Sorry, i thought the win 7 320gb drive had been on PC already. Thats what I get for thinking I know whats happening...

that is odd then, if it worked on the 1tb it should still work on the 320 since you didn't change anything... is hdd using same cable 1tb used?

I wonder if USB shows up if you d/c both drives. And no, I don't know why hdd would be blocking USB... its just an idea.

motherboard has 4 sata ports, I wonder if they share channels with USB - I don't know if this is a thing.

 

[Colif]

can you check if USB works in another PC? It might have randomly died

 

[Vic 40]

Tried a clear cmos?

 

[thefinest1]

Yes USB works in another PC

Couldn't find clear CMOS

1TB is in SATA port 1
320gb SATA port 2

 

[Colif]

See page 1-11 of your motherboard manual - Here - it shows how to clear the cmos

helps to have PC unplugged when you do it.

 

[thefinest1]

http://imageshack.com/a/img924/8923/up9kQZ.jpg

 

[thefinest1]

Ive attached some photos

 

[Colif]

is that after cmos reset?

 

[thefinest1]

let me start by thanking everyone for their advice and help.

I took earlier advice and put the USB drive at the rear of the PC and it worked! shows up in the BIOS too! I checked the front connectors and its seated properly, not sure what happened there.

I'm installing windows 10 on the 320gb drive at the moment.

what is the best way to wipe the 1TB of everything?

 

[Colif]

Have the 1tb hdd as only drive in PC, boot from installer and on screen after the languages screen,
Press Shift F10 on the installation screen, this will open cmd
type diskpart and press enter
type list disk and press enter
this shows all drives available, DVD/USB and hdd, make note of hdd number
type Select disk X - where X is the number of the hdd you want to clear, change X to that number and press enter
once the drive you want to wipe is chosen, type Clean

glad the problem was something simple

 

[thefinest1]

yeah its great when its simple, but you do feel like a doofus!

I will be starting another thread regarding windows 10 start up