Hey all,

 

I recently put together a home server with a mix of some old parts I had sitting around. The build is an Asus Maximus Hero IX motherboard, Intel 7700k CPU,I think 64gb of basic ddr4 RAM, EVGA 400w psu, in a fratal design define r5. Storage is a 1tb m.2, 240gb 2.5 SSD, 120gb 2.5 ssd, and a 4tb HDD.

 

I can't for the life of me get the unraid GUI to boot. I've made 2 bootable USB drives, a 16gb and a 32gb. I've made them both on the creation tool and ran the makebootable.bat for both. I've even tried wiping the 16gb drive, and manually making the boot drive with the zip from the site directory. Neither drive will boot on my server, but I tested them on my gaming PC and they booted without changing any bios settings besides the boot order.

 

On my server PC, I've tried the following troubleshooting steps. In bios I've enabled/disabled fastboot, switched storage boot drives from "legacy only" to "UEFI driver first", changed USB storage device to forced-FDD. I've tried pretty much every USB port on the rear io as well as the case USBs. I made one of the USB drives EFI, and the other -EFI to force one to boot in legacy with the other being UEFI. I have both drives plugged in and one after the other in boot order, and both will just be a black screen with a flashing cursor before returning me to bios. I've tried unplugging my keyboard mouse combo while booting as well and still just get the flashing cursor before returning to bios. I can't disable USB 3.0/2.0 support, all I can do is disable the ports completely. I've updated the BIOS to the most recent. I've made an Ubuntu portable flash drive just to see if it was the motherboard refusing to boot with no dedicated GPU, but it booted fine with just Intel integrated graphics. I'm completely lost here. If you need me to clarify anything please ask. Thank you much.

12 minutes ago, Friarsgate_Customs said:

pretty much every USB port on the rear io

Including the USB2 ports?

 

Just now, trurl said:

Including the USB2 ports?

Yeah, I've tried USB 2 and 3 on the rear io. They say the case 2.0s shouldn't be used so I haven't tried those 2 on my server yet. The gaming PC that I got the drives to boot on was using USB 3 on the front of the case and it worked somehow. 

Some bits to try in bios:

Disable secure boot

Disable TPM 2.0

Disable CSM

Disable anything else not essential to boot.

32 minutes ago, Friarsgate_Customs said:

I can't for the life of me get the unraid GUI to boot

Does the non-GUI mode work?

16 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

Does the non-GUI mode work?

I'm not sure what that is. This is a first time install for the trial, so I'm not super familiar with everything. It only does the flashing cursor black screen for 5-15 seconds before restarting back to BIOS. It never just sits there endlessly.

You said they boot in your gaming PC, so I assumed you saw the menu there.

I did see the menu on my gaming PC, but I just shut down the system after I saw that anything showed up at all, because that's further than I've got at all on my server PC. My apologies.

 

Secure boot is off by default because "other OS" is selected in the drop-down instead of windows UEFI. I tried CSM disabling and enabling and flipping between legacy/uefi in all the subsections and still can't get it going. 

Is the motherboard BIOS latest version?

Yeah, I messed with all my settings on the old bios FW, updated to the latest FW, tried messing with all the settings again. No dice either way 

Try swapping the memory to from channel A to B.  (or vice versa)

Sorry I should've specified in my original post about the ram. It's 16gb*4 2133hz sticks. It was old gaming PC parts I got in a trade, the guy had it on a Windows machine. All the windows related stuff has been wiped from the BIOS though when I reset the cmos battery and installed new BIOS firmware. 

No worry.  I had stumbled on a buried post regarding some strange similar gremlins and that was listed as a solution to swap memory from A1 A2 to B1 B2.  I'm grasping at straws now.

21 minutes ago, Friarsgate_Customs said:

installed new BIOS firmware

After you did that, did you "load cmos defaults"?

24 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

After you did that, did you "load cmos defaults"?

After updating I've used the clear cmos button that the motherboard has on the rear I/O as well as popping out and reinstalling the cmos battery.

Just now, Friarsgate_Customs said:

I've used the clear cmos button

Are you sure that performs the same function? Some BIOS's have a "load performance settings" "load default settings" and possibly other options.

4 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

Are you sure that performs the same function? Some BIOS's have a "load performance settings" "load default settings" and possibly other options.

I don't have anything to reset to default inside of the BIOS sadly. It definitely reset the BIOS setting changes I've made when I hit the reset cmos button though, because I keep having to disable fast boot each time I do it hah.

A trick that some have found helpful is to use Rufus to format the drive and then use the Manual install method.

 

It is also worth pointing out that having the flash drive enabled for UEFI booting does not disable the legacy boot option - it is just if your BIOS supports both modes you will see the flash drive show up in the boot option twice - once for each mode.

24 minutes ago, itimpi said:

A trick that some have found helpful is to use Rufus to format the drive and then use the Manual install method.

 

It is also worth pointing out that having the flash drive enabled for UEFI booting does not disable the legacy boot option - it is just if your BIOS supports both modes you will see the flash drive show up in the boot option twice - once for each mode.

I just had someone on reddit tell me this same thing, from this thread. I finally got to the unraid menu. So relieved 🙏