USB stops the BIOS from starting?
USB stops the BIOS from starting?
You own an older ASUS Sabertooth Mark S Mini and use a USB drive as a temporary file transfer tool between Manjaro and Windows 10. The drive contains mostly text files but triggers strange behavior on your motherboard—once plugged in, it freezes during boot, showing the BIOS splash screen and then locking up without letting you access the BIOS menu. Even when unplugged, you can boot into GRUB normally. You suspect the USB itself is causing the issue, regardless of where it’s connected. Since you’re familiar with tech, you’re wondering how to resolve this without knowing the exact fix.
I rely on InitDisk to handle problems with dead flash drives or to clear any boot code from a drive. Follow the instructions carefully without adjusting any settings. https://www.grc.com/initdisk.htm I also asked if this applies to USB drives.
I'm using just this USB for everything. I'll check initdisk to look for any bootcode, but overall it shouldn't stop the BIOS from starting, right? Also, I haven't installed any .iso or similar files that could act as a boot code. The flash drive is brand new and works perfectly once connected after the system is up.
An ISO isn't the boot code itself. You need to create a bootable version by formatting the USB drive and restoring your desired files. The original files are usually hidden, so you may need to format carefully. Try this method—don’t plug it in during startup if you can’t get it to boot.
I understand an ISO isn't bootcode, so saying it's installed on a drive makes sense—it can be used to start the system. They might hide it, but I checked with Linux and found nothing suspicious. It seems like fixing the issue might have helped; deleting the "System Volume Information" folder and then trying again worked for me. Windows could still be the cause of the problem.
So a quick update for the people that find this issue on Google in the future since they have trouble with the same thing: The problem reappeared in different flavors and today I about finally had it with this stupid issue and diagnosed it in depth. Basically the problem of my BIOS not even getting past the BIOS splash screen had nothing to do with either my motherboard OR my USBs. My MoBo flashed an LED on post that has the label "BOOT_DEVICE_LED". So it was having trouble with boot devices. The issue correlated pretty well timing wise to me installing Manjaro and switching to GRUB to dual boot Windows. Around that time I also got the USBs which made it seem like it was their fault. It sometimes did post, sometimes it didn't, sometimes no USB was present and it wasn't posting, sometimes it was. In the end the issue is entirely on GRUB or Linux. For some reason either of the two decided to add about 20 "bootable drives" called "UEFI OS" to my list of installed drives (Side note: Before I had Legacy windows and UEFI Manjaro which made GRUB unusable, I used to go into the BIOS to switch between the two and that's when I first saw the massive amounts of "ghost drives" that were supposedly connected - I had GRUB installed at that time however since I wasn't aware dual booting wasn't possible with Legacy and UEFI, they both need to be the same so I later converted Windows to UEFI). I just kinda ignored these "ghost drives" since I thought it wasn't really doing much but something about this seems to really make my MoBo struggling. It's probably trying to add the USB to the connected devices but since there's like 20 of those already maybe the BIOS gets overloaded so it doesn't post or even let me into the BIOS settings then? No clue what the technical details are, just a hunch. In the end I restarted the computer without the drive on which Manjaro and GRUB are installed. Then I shut it down after post, put the drive back in and when I post now I only have one "UEFI OS" entry left. I tried to plug all of the USB ports I have on my board and it worked just fine. I hope this permanently fixed my issue. PCs can sometimes really be detective work and I have no fucking clue what about unplugging and replugging the drive did the trick for my BIOS but here is to this hopefully being resolved permanently.