Utilizing virtual machines to assess or dismiss motherboard issues
Utilizing virtual machines to assess or dismiss motherboard issues
I'm testing an ASUS WRX90E Sage SE motherboard for a server build that I'm currently putting together and I've encountered a weird problem. Windows 10 installs and runs perfectly fine, but windows 11 is having a lot of trouble installing despite my motherboard officially listing compatibility for it and all of the relevant bios settings being set correctly for it to install (tpm enabled, secure boot, csm, etc). The very first time i tried installing windows 11, it got to the desktop and worked fine until i had to restart to install graphics drivers - after that, I've never been able to get it to repair or install successfully even while making sure to have only one storage drive connected during install etc. This has happened the same way on multiple different nvme ssds. Before my motherboard's return window is up (March 5th) i need a way to rule in or rule out if this is some kind of motherboard hardware problem. One reason why I suspect it could be a hardware problem is that during every windows 11 install via installation media, a 0 byte capacity storage drive always shows up as the last drive on the drive search list (if there are two real drives they will show up as drives 0 and 1 while this phantom drive will show up as drive #2 - if there is one real drive, it will show as drive 0 and the phantom will always show as drive 1). This phantom drive does not show up at all in windows 10 install, which just shows only the drives actually available (the windows 11 installer will also detect the boot usb as a drive on this list, but the windows 10 installer notably will not), and this installation works consistently without a hitch. One method I've heard of determining whether i have a motherboard hardware issue or not is to try installing a windows 11 virtual machine on a windows 10 pro install. If windows 11 installs successfully as a virtual machine, then that would suggest that the motherboard abstraction (hypervisor) that windows 10 provides would be cleaning up whatever issues win11 is having with the actual motherboard hardware and confirm that the cpu/ram/gpu are all agreeing with win11 and are not the problem. Is that logic sound?
Thanks for the insight—motherboard issues really came through during deeper testing on Windows 10. I hadn’t realized it would be the culprit at first. The "whea_uncorrectable_error" crash happened twice, and combined with the ghost drive and successful RAM tests, everything became clear.
Great news about your return! Please let me know if you need any further assistance!