Hello all. 
 

I upgraded my unraid server with a new mobo, cpu, ram, etc but am not able to boot the machine via the unraid thumb drive. 
 

The bios sees all the drives just fine. As a test I stuck a live thumb drive of Linux in and it booted normally. 
 

I’m pretty convinced the issue is the bios is set for uefi boot and my thumb drive is set for bios boot. In uefi mode, the system just immediately reloads the bios screen. Strangely, if I put the system into bios mode nothing ever happens - I just get a black screen. I even have to reset the CMOS back to defaults in order to get back into the bios. 
 

So I suppose I need change the unraid thumb drive to uefi boot mode — which as I understand is as easy as renaming the efi- folder to efi. 
 

Any sage words of advice before I do surgery on the unraid thumb drive would be appreciated!!

 

Fwiw the new mobo is a MSI Z490 MPG Gaming Plus, and the new cpu is a 10850k. 
 

 

Edited March 14, 20215 yr by Ozmodious
Added mobo mfr name

After further research, I went ahead and enabled the efi folder by removing the trailing “-“ from its name. The server immediately booted and all is well. 

In addition to the above, it is necessary to update the bios for this mobo.  Bios versions older than .60 not boot normally with both IGD and multiple PCI devices plugged in.  Once the bios is updated to .60, boot will behave more normally.