ASUS WRX90E Sage SE Windows 11 installation issues are common. Try these steps to resolve them.
ASUS WRX90E Sage SE Windows 11 installation issues are common. Try these steps to resolve them.
I’m looking for anyone who has experience with this motherboard. My setup uses a Threadripper 7975wx/wrx90 with an Sage SE RTX 6000, 2 NVMe SSDs in M2_1 and M2_2 slots. It’s having major issues installing Windows 11. On my first try, I reached the desktop without problems, but after restarting for graphics drivers, everything failed. I’ve been using a USB installation media and following online tips. I’ve removed all drives except one I’m installing to, plus another empty drive that keeps showing up but doesn’t work. I don’t know what it is or where it’s stored. I usually get past the computer name part and run into problems after Windows downloads and installs—about 23% of the time the install crashes and restarts. Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated!
Which release of Windows 11 are you setting up? This setup is designed for maximum reliability, so I recommend installing ltsc on. Disconnect all drives except the one you intend to use, as Windows prefers keeping other partitions intact.
Did you verify the BOOT menu in the BIOS for multiple Windows Boot Managers and attempted a boot from another if available? I've noticed some bootloaders performing unusual actions, but adding a RAID0 setup to your boot volume can complicate matters. The bootloader must manage the RAID driver to correctly locate Windows.
You should include a RAID driver in your Windows installer. I’ve added it on similar systems before, even though it seems odd now after confirming hardware RAID is off in BIOS.
You bought a VERY high-end workstation motherboard. It's hard for me to say without ever being hands on with it. Regardless of the ghost 0 size volume you should have the ability to manually select the Windows Boot Manager if they can be independently selected in the boot menu or re-arranged in the Boot Order menu. I've seen 0KB volumes before when you have something like a MultiMedia Card Reader connected but no NAND SD or MicroSD card connected. The card is nothing but NAND the MultiMedia Reader hosts the controller so it sometimes reads a storage size of 0 when nothing is connected.
Chatgpt assisted in finding a command-line approach to detect the 0 drive and hide it from the Windows installer. If successful, I’ll share the solution once I apply it after work. This isn’t the actual operating system, but a quick test method for checking components before setting up a real server environment.
If that applies, consider testing with Windows 10. You can perform burn-in tests just as smoothly, and it shouldn’t perform worse than the problems you’re facing with Windows 11. The issue shouldn’t matter if the 0KB disk appears as disk 0 or shows up during installation. This doesn’t affect whether you can install and boot from the M.2 SSD. Occasionally I’ve noticed cases where you skip selecting the Windows Boot Manager in BIOS—you just need to click on the SSD name, which is usually a long string of letters, numbers, underscores, and dashes. It contains the bootloader and knows the correct location for Windows.
The boot manager displays properly in BIOS, yet you're aware of potential installation challenges when using storage other than the intended drive. Is the Windows 10 installer free from these issues?