Microsoft pushes Windows 11 aggressively 🚀
Microsoft pushes Windows 11 aggressively 🚀
I'm still unsure about my feelings. It's been a bit better without the Windows 10 issues that kept happening every couple of weeks over the past three years. However, I might still want to switch back to Linux once I gather some new stuff for Christmas. After all, I've got a B450M DS3H V2, a Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB Corsair Vengeance 3600 MHz RAM, and Windows 10 key—though it's not ready for Windows 11.
It's stable and I'm satisfied with that. I still have two other computers (my kids' machines) that are having issues. When I combined everything and posted it (first attempt, yay for me), I felt a bit anxious about the BIOS message. So yes, CSM is active, fast boot is disabled, secure boot is off, and TPM is off or version 1. The BIOS said it was either first use or a rebuild—whether to keep current keys in TPM or start fresh, basically it seemed like choosing TPM2 might brick the new system, so I didn't want that.
If CSM remains active, it indicates your setup is configured to mimic the older BIOS environment, which supports hardware from ten years prior but lacks UEFI capabilities. This results in the system relying on MBR formatting rather than GPT, making UEFI boot impossible. Consequently, your storage is formatted as MBR instead of GPT. Since BIOS only communicates with MBR-formatted drives and UEFI requires GPT, disabling CSM will prevent OS startup. The positive side is Microsoft introduced a tool in Windows 10—mbr2gpt.exe—a command-line utility that can transform an MBR drive into a GPT format without erasing data entirely. This approach eliminates the need for a full drive wipe and allows a clean conversion. To resolve the issue, consider backing up your information before proceeding with the conversion, then run mbr2gpt to change the format, restart, enable Fast Boot, and activate Secure Boot. Depending on your motherboard, it may also bypass artificial delays to let you enter UEFI smoothly. If you have TPM encryption on your drive, be aware of the warning—it may affect access if you haven’t received a recovery key or replaced the CPU. If the board was previously tested by the manufacturer, any mismatch in the TPM key could render encrypted data inaccessible until resolved.
That was the impression I had after reviewing it later. Regarding the CSM feature, I believe it represents the more recent UEFI BIOS version that behaves similarly to adding VHDs in the Windows boot menu—demonstrating that the drives are GPT and running EFI, which might be a bit tricky to capture but I’ll give it a shot.
Here’s the bios screen to help display your current settings, along with the boot options I mentioned earlier.