SOLVED ASUS Prime Z270-A Won't Accept Windows Install

MA3STRO

Yeah once or twice it loaded up a string of messages and didn't boot, but resetting it made it work ok.

I cannot recall the exact error now, but it was one of those "Send diagnostic" type errors. I searched it at the time and the page I found in the Ubuntu forums suggested it was a problem many others were having with that version of Ubuntu i.e. a software issue or bug rather than a hardware issue.

Update: It didn't stop Ubuntu running in any way.

MA3STRO

We didn't check that today.

Jamie - have you tested the PSU yet? You never mentioned you did so I am assuming you didn't.

cabbie19

Hi all, i haven't "tested" the psu as such, but it's from my sig rig and performs perfectly in that build, so i would say PSU is fine? It has been back in my main build in between testing the z270 build, and still working fine.

steveo67

May be worth doing a BIOS reset, the hardware one not just in the BIOS screen. That's usually a button/jumper on the board but MAKE SURE it's completely unplugged and powered off before doing this.
It's also worth checking your RAID/IDE/AHCI settings - I've had a few that needed that toggled until Windows is loaded and then toggled back afterwards. Symptoms are the same random halt during the boot sequence.

Might also be worth doing a full Diskpart cleanup of the drive as it's probably ended up with lots of weird partitioning going back and forth between the various OS.

cabbie19

I haven't got access to another cpu, board, or DDR4 memory sadly, hence i have tested the memory very extensively with both windows memory diagnostic (largely considered rubbish, but thought it was worth a couple of passes in case it showed something memtest86 had missed), and multiple passes of memtest86. Memory was tested one stick at a time, in various dimm slots of the 270 board.
Almost all testing has been performed out of the case in "minimal build" status, and as MA3STRO has stated the board has been updated to the latest BIOS (1302).

Regards
Jamie.

cabbie19

Hi, and thanks for your contribution  
The BIOS has been "hard re-set" multiple times during various stages of testing by removing power cable, and once all lights on the board have gone out, removing the BIOS battery for 5 mins, then re-fitting battery, and power cable, booting to BIOS and clicking optimised defaults before next tests carried out.
There is a setting in bios to choose "other os" or "UEFI Windows", this defaults to other os, but we have tried in both modes, SATA is in AHCI mode.
The Windows install has never got far enough to effect hard drives as far as i can tell, the 2.5 and 3.5 drives are clean formatted to ntfs, the other 2.5 has a fresh basic install of Win 10 on, and i'm unable to test the m.2 as the only board i have is the one we are working with.
The board always boots to BIOS without any problems, the problems only start when you start trying to install Windows.

Regards
Jamie.

steveo67

This post might be of interest, seems to show the method of installing directly to the M2 SSD  - Windows 10 boot problems on new ASUS Prime Z270-A with RAID0 array - [Solved] - Motherboards

MA3STRO

Good link @steveo67

This recommendation looks worth trying:

cabbie19

That leads me to think there may be an old install of windows on the m.2, as it shows in the motherboard bios.

Yes, it is worth a go....won't be today though, as i have had to clear everything away to make way for Sunday dinner  

MA3STRO

That could explain why it was crashing Ubuntu too.

If you were able to get logged in with it attached, you could have formatted it and chrckch the disk for errors.