[SOLUTION: Make your USB Legacy, UEFI. Pweh, three days of tampering done]

 

Hi There

My Home unRAID server won't boot from usb after reboot / restart.

Every time I must enter bios, save changes (without making any changes), restart, then it boots fine.

After a restart, there is no errors on screen. Just blank. (Normally it would say something like: no media present, if there is no boot disk).

- I tried four different USB sticks (Kingston, Samsung, no-name)

- BIOS set to correct Boot Sequence.

- Same problem whether headless or with monitor

- Disabling all boot devices (emptied the boot sequence) except for the USB.

- Searching for similar problems on MSI motherboards forums

- Tried to boot from four different USB Ports

 

Same result: Boots fine first time, won’t boot after restart. No boot errors – Just blank screen.

 

Kudos to any advise out there! 😊

Edited May 10, 20197 yr by IWasJustHere
Found solution

So strangely, also with an MSI motherboard, i'm having the exact same issue, boots fine no errors or issues from complete power off, but i cannot reboot else i get the exact same black screen. Even going into the bios and making no changes doesnt fix it, i have to completely power off the system for it to boot again. Any ideas? (this is with a legacy usb (i think) that is just unpacking the files yourself and using the .bat to make it bootable right) first time unraid user here.

On 5/20/2020 at 10:26 PM, MitchElwell said:

So strangely, also with an MSI motherboard, i'm having the exact same issue, boots fine no errors or issues from complete power off, but i cannot reboot else i get the exact same black screen. Even going into the bios and making no changes doesnt fix it, i have to completely power off the system for it to boot again. Any ideas? (this is with a legacy usb (i think) that is just unpacking the files yourself and using the .bat to make it bootable right) first time unraid user here.

 

Sorry if I bother this old post.

 

Same MSI, same issue here. I disabled the fastboot option in bios and problem solved. No need to change the usb drive in my case. 

Note that there is a "fastboot" (default enabled) and a "msi fastboot" (default disabled), they all need to be disabled.

I got this solution from Pela in this topic . Hope it works for you.

On 5/10/2021 at 4:20 AM, Siyuan said:

 

Sorry if I bother this old post.

 

Same MSI, same issue here. I disabled the fastboot option in bios and problem solved. No need to change the usb drive in my case. 

Note that there is a "fastboot" (default enabled) and a "msi fastboot" (default disabled), they all need to be disabled.

I got this solution from Pela in this topic . Hope it works for you.

I was having the exact same problem with my MSI motherboard.  This was driving me crazy - I had to remove the flash drive and put it into a different USB slot after each reboot in order to get the system to boot back into unraid.

 

After turning off the fast boot option in the BIOS it now works perfectly.

 

On 9/10/2021 at 8:11 AM, bdee1 said:

I was having the exact same problem with my MSI motherboard.  This was driving me crazy - I had to remove the flash drive and put it into a different USB slot after each reboot in order to get the system to boot back into unraid.

 

After turning off the fast boot option in the BIOS it now works perfectly.

 

Fix worked for me!  MSI Z590.

On 9/10/2021 at 5:11 AM, bdee1 said:

I was having the exact same problem with my MSI motherboard.  This was driving me crazy - I had to remove the flash drive and put it into a different USB slot after each reboot in order to get the system to boot back into unraid.

 

After turning off the fast boot option in the BIOS it now works perfectly.

 

Thanks! Turn off fast boot worked for me!

On 5/10/2021 at 1:20 AM, Siyuan said:

 

Sorry if I bother this old post.

 

Same MSI, same issue here. I disabled the fastboot option in bios and problem solved. No need to change the usb drive in my case. 

Note that there is a "fastboot" (default enabled) and a "msi fastboot" (default disabled), they all need to be disabled.

I got this solution from Pela in this topic . Hope it works for you.

Quote

Thank-you so much. I've been fighting with this for a couple of days, and it had been driving me crazy. Like bdee1, every time I had to reboot or restart, I had to move the USB drive to another port. At first I thought it was my usb drive, so I swapped that, then I thought it was the motherboard and was about to RMA it until I stumbled across your post.

 

To this date this is still working. I had the same issue and turning off both Fast Boot options in BIOS fixed it. Now I don't have to worry about it booting up after a power outage (if longer than UPS backup).

3.5 years later and this is still valid! Worked like a charm.

If anybody can help me out here or has any ideas I’d be super appreciative! 
 

I’ve got an MSI mortar and it doesn’t have an option to disable fast boot. I’ve got this annoying issue and every time I reboot I have to go into the bios. It’s so frustrating! 
 

any help would be appreciated. 

On 3/18/2023 at 6:57 PM, atmaledy said:

If anybody can help me out here or has any ideas I’d be super appreciative! 
 

I’ve got an MSI mortar and it doesn’t have an option to disable fast boot. I’ve got this annoying issue and every time I reboot I have to go into the bios. It’s so frustrating! 
 

any help would be appreciated. 

 

I had this same issue and disabling fast boot in my MSI bios fixed the reboot issue.

 

If the below doesn't work for you, try searching for a YouTube video for your specific motherboard; maybe someone else had the same issue.

 

1. Enable Advanced Mode

The first thing that you have to do is enable advanced mode in the bios.

Once in the MSI bios, you should just be able to press the F7 key on your keyboard to toggle between advanced mode and EZ mode.

If that doesn't work, at least on my MSI Z790-P, the button to enable advanced mode was near the top-center of the bios screen.

 

2. Disable Fast Boot

Once advanced mode is enabled, you can click big button "Motherboard settings".

Then click on the list item "Boot".

Then the list should change in which you should find Fast boot; disable it.

 

3. Save Changes

Then navigate back in the menu by pressing the backspace key on your keyboard and select the "Save & Exit" list item.

Then select the option to "Exit saving changes" (or something similar).

Same problem with Asus PN41 mini-pc, unfortunately no fast-boot option in BIOS, and this PC only allow UEFI boot.

Different OS ( also UEFI boot ) no such problem.

I actually had a really similar problem but disabling fastboot wasn't fixing it. Disabling Secure Boot did fix it for me, hopefully this helps someone.

2 minutes ago, Scheev said:

I actually had a really similar problem but disabling fastboot wasn't fixing it. Disabling Secure Boot did fix it for me, hopefully this helps someone.

Secure boot is different topic, when happen BIOS will prompt a warning message.

 

For fast boot issue, as other people solutions, you can enter/ exit BIOS or change to other USB port for boot one time.

Disabling Secure boot worked for my new MSI PRO B760-P DDR4 II x i3-12100.

ASRock B450 Pro4 with 5700G here. Same kind of issue. I have to turn off the power supply of the machine to eventually have a proper boot.

BIOS is up to date, fast boot is disabled, secure boot is still enabled (haven't tried that yet).

My USB flash drive is fairly new, Samsung SACLE32BE4 as recommended by spaceinvaderone, on a USB 2 header.

 

This is what I observe :

1) From a fresh power plugin, unraid boots fine.

2) I engage a system restart

3) Unraid doesn't boot, it's like the usb / mount become inaccessible after a precise operation related to HID something with USB 1-6 something.

(I promess I will take a screen photo of that moment in the futur... It stresses my out so I avoid rebooting for the lolz)

4) After unraid tries to restart HID controller and fails, it says to press "ENTER" to initiate a reboot. So that's what I do.

5) Server restart, the USB drive isn't even recognize anymore and the BIOS default to the famous message "please insert boot device and press any key"

If I check in the BIOS, the USB drive isn't there as well.

6) Any amount of manual restart/reset won't fix this issue.

7) If I now change the unraid flash drive to another USB port on the motherboard, it now boot fine.

Alternatively, If I unplug the server from the main AC and plug it back in, it will also boot fine on the same USB header.

 

The last method is what I prefer, as my USB flash drive is not very accessible without involving a lot of moving stuff around.

 

Their was a "before" to this were my server would boot 100% of the time : when I had an older motherboard (A320 serie). But I wanted to have dual cache drive, and the low end end only had 1 m.2 slot. So I "upgraded" the motherboard to this ASrock I had lying around and since then, no amount of BIOS update or settings changes in the BIOS has ever fix this issue.

tower-diagnostics-20241222-1033.zip syslog-192.168.20.163.log

Edited December 22, 20241 yr by A.sch3
Corrections

I have the exact same issue @A.sch3 I have an ASRock Rack X470 D4U 

I always have to open it up to change the port the USB Device is in, I have Secure Boot and Fast Boot off but still no luck. 

Oh man I'm so glad i'm not the only one !

What a crazy issue right? I think I will end up replacing the motherboard for some 500 chipset serie as it seems less affected as chipsets from 400 serie. For example I have a secondary Unraid server with a MSI Tomahawk B550 that works beautifully, never crashes, always boot, fully featured with 2.5G LAN. I'm thinking getting the same board and be done with this issue.

Had the same issue on Asus B760 D4 Wifi, disabling fastboot solved the issue. Thanks!

 

I think this might be worth a sticky or FAQ, because researching the issue first points to faulty or incompatible ram, and then people (me) start replacing parts. Took me a week of frustration to find it's a USB boot issue.

Just wanted to give a huge thanks to this thread as well. Was driving me nuts, and disabling fast boot worked perfectly.

 

For the record I also had an MSI motherboard, though it does seem like the issue extends to a few others as well. But thought I'd toss that detail in the mix.

disabling fast boot solved inconsistent boot problems on my asus prime h510m-k

Just an update for my case (Nothing worked, fast boot or such, systematically unraid won't do a reboot. I have to remove power from the server and plug-it back):

Updating to UnRaid 7 fixed fully this boot issue.

OK, old thread but still relevant:

I'm rebuilding my server with a new mainboard, and a fresh install of Unraid (some customization that I have done was preventing it from booting in anything but safe mode)

ASUS - TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI

I'm running the same USB key but a fresh copy of 7.1.4.

System will boot the first time, but a reboot results in black screen.

If I go into the BIOS and save - it boots

If I tell it to boot from the USB - it boots

If I reboot and do nothing - blank screen

As above, turning OFF fast boot makes everything work.

Update on my end too. While updating to 7.0.0 and above solved my issue (will not boot unless I remove power from the computer all together), It did not entirely solved it.

From time to time, my unraid won't boot, showing the same issue with USB devices as previously. Soft reboot don't solve this, I still have to unplug the power from the power supply for some seconds, then plug-in back in. Sometime this won't be enough though, so repeating this procedure will at some point, work.

Fortunately it only happen once every 5 reboot i'd say. Honestly I think my motherboard is the issue here. BIOS is up to date ofc, I check almost every month.

seems to have solved my problem as well