Secure boot broke my boot drive.

[Meredin]

I believe I was here maybe 5-8 months ago with a similar issue. Forgive me if this is in the wrong spot or tagged wrong.

 

With games asking for secure boot enabled, I enabled it in my bios but it made my boot drive unusable without using CSM compatibility mode enabled. But that limits some features like virtualization.

 

I have a asus rog strix b550 motherborard

the boot drive is an nvme m.2

 

even after updating the bios it still doesn’t work. And even after turning off secure boot it still needs compatibility mode to see the drive.

 

im hoping someone here has had a similar issue or knows how to fix this. 

My last thought after trying what I could is get a new boot drive, with a fresh windows install with the bios settings as I would like them, since it might not courrupt the boot record of a fresh device that only knows secure boot. But then I don’t know if I could even see the old drive without compatibility mode.

[PDifolco]

1 minute ago, Meredin said:

I believe I was here maybe 5-8 months ago with a similar issue. Forgive me if this is in the wrong spot or tagged wrong.

 

With games asking for secure boot enabled, I enabled it in my bios but it made my boot drive unusable without using CSM compatibility mode enabled. But that limits some features like virtualization.

 

I have a asus rog strix b550 motherborard

the boot drive is an nvme m.2

 

even after updating the bios it still doesn’t work. And even after turning off secure boot it still needs compatibility mode to see the drive.

 

im hoping someone here has had a similar issue or knows how to fix this. 

My last thought after trying what I could is get a new boot drive, with a fresh windows install with the bios settings as I would like them, since it might not courrupt the boot record of a fresh device that only knows secure boot. But then I don’t know if I could even see the old drive without compatibility mode.

You boot drive should be Legacy Windows install, can't use it with secure boot caus eit needs CSM, you need to switch your drive to GPT and reinstall Windows in UEFI mode

[Eigenvektor]

If you need CSM enabled, that makes me suspect you've installed Windows on a drive formatted with MBR rather than GPT. A fresh install with CSM disabled should fix that.

[C2dan88]

13 minutes ago, Meredin said:

My last thought after trying what I could is get a new boot drive, with a fresh windows install with the bios settings as I would like them, since it might not courrupt the boot record of a fresh device that only knows secure boot. But then I don’t know if I could even see the old drive without compatibility mode.

 

Or you could use mbr2gpt to convert drive to gpt first, then you can disable csm and enable secure boot. No need to fresh install windows.

 

[Kilrah]

Just back up anything important before attempting the conversion, it's been known to occasionally fail.

[Meredin]

Thank you all so much!!! Had no idea there were things like mbr and gpt. But yes this seemes like it was exactly what was going on. Backed up important stuff and used the tool someone suggested and it seems to have worked perfectly!

[Meredin]

5 hours ago, C2dan88 said:

 

Or you could use mbr2gpt to convert drive to gpt first, then you can disable csm and enable secure boot. No need to fresh install windows.

 

Thanks so much!!! If you didn’t suggest this I would have probably freshly installed it to change it!

[Meredin]

5 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

If you need CSM enabled, that makes me suspect you've installed Windows on a drive formatted with MBR rather than GPT. A fresh install with CSM disabled should fix that.

Thanks so much! Had no idea MBR or GTP were a thing.