Workaround for "Cannot Enter Bios" problem X99 Motherboards

[Kevin]

After some considerable reading about the UFEI and being able to enter it within Windows 8, (and the inability to choose to boot Unix, Linux, Apple, OS's), I have found a way to enter the BIOS without too much trouble. Leave your C:Boot as a Master Boot Record, (with its System Reserve Partition) the way that it normally is.

Dell, HP, Acer all use the "Pure"UFEI at C: when they build their systems, just to please Microsoft !!!

The rest of us use the "Layer" of UFEI that sits on top of the basic BIOS

Do an update to your BIOS.

Unplug all your drives and enter BIOS and change a couple of things. Make sure "Full Screen Logo" is de-activated and that Fast Boot is turned off.  This allows the AMI BIOS splash screen to appear for 3 seconds. Sadly you will have to press your "ON" button to shut down.

Now attach your C:Boot MBR drive and try out hot and cold starts and re-starts.  Shutdown and unplug the electricity supply.  Attach all your drives.  They will show up in Control Panel>Computer Management>Disk Management.  Here you will see all your drives.  You may notice your non-C: drives may be missing 100 to 250 MB of space.  This is because there may be hidden partitions on these drives.

Download "MiniTool Partition Wizard Free". You may see the "hidden" partitions on your non-C: drives that you could not see in Windows.  Just extend the needed part of the Bar Graph into the "hidden but now revealed" part, reducing it to zero.  This is non-destructive to the bulk of the partition that you want to keep. 

Within the Windows Disk Management you will not see these unwanted partitions.  Only C: System Reserved shows there.

Within the "MiniTool", Initialise all your non-C: drives.  This is non-destructive also, for you do not format the drive, only change the way BIOS sees the drive.  There is a box at the start of the Bar Graphs (on the left).  Right Click it and choose convert MBR to GPT (Globally Unique ID/Partition Table).  Now your Non-C: drives will not clash with BIOS.

The BIOS is looking for that MBR, but unknown and/or unseen "System Reserved/MBR" partitions are confusing the startup.

Now go into BIOS and select each non_C: drive and "disable" each as a non-boot drive.  This ensures that BIOS only has one hard drive to seek!  The list should only have your C: drive as active boot.

I hope this works for you, but read up about it, and also read the forums before you act.  Make yourself certain that my fix is valid.

[Kevin]

Further to my Workaround. 

Start from cold boot to Windows.

To confirm that your non-C: drives are actually GUID drives, go back to Windows Disk Management.  Click the panel at the start of the Bar Graph (on the left) then right click>Properties>Volumes tab.

Here is confirmation about Partition Style.  GUID is the future of Drive classification.

[rubbersoul]

Hi Kevin,
it seems to be good news.
First, i'm a Win 7 64 Bit Professional user, i hope this will work with your workaround stated above.
One question cause i'm not a native speaker, can you please explain it more simple what to do.
Thanks in advance!

[hobib_ali]

After some considerable reading about the UFEI and being able to enter it within Windows 8, (and the inability to choose to boot Unix, Linux, Apple, OS's), I have found a way to enter the BIOS without too much trouble. Leave your C:Boot as a Master Boot Record, (with its System Reserve Partition) the way that it normally is.

Dell, HP, Acer all use the "Pure"UFEI at C: when they build their systems, just to please Microsoft !!!

The rest of us use the "Layer" of UFEI that sits on top of the basic BIOS

Do an update to your BIOS.

Unplug all your drives and enter BIOS and change a couple of things. Make sure "Full Screen Logo" is de-activated and that Fast Boot is turned off.  This allows the AMI BIOS splash screen to appear for 3 seconds. Sadly you will have to press your "ON" button to shut down.

Now attach your C:Boot MBR drive and try out hot and cold starts and re-starts.  Shutdown and unplug the electricity supply.  Attach all your drives.  They will show up in Control Panel>Computer Management>Disk Management.  Here you will see all your drives.  You may notice your non-C: drives may be missing 100 to 250 MB of space.  This is because there may be hidden partitions on these drives.

Download "MiniTool Partition Wizard Free". You may see the "hidden" partitions on your non-C: drives that you could not see in Windows.  Just extend the needed part of the Bar Graph into the "hidden but now revealed" part, reducing it to zero.  This is non-destructive to the bulk of the partition that you want to keep. 

Within the Windows Disk Management you will not see these unwanted partitions.  Only C: System Reserved shows there.

Within the "MiniTool", Initialise all your non-C: drives.  This is non-destructive also, for you do not format the drive, only change the way BIOS sees the drive.  There is a box at the start of the Bar Graphs (on the left).  Right Click it and choose convert MBR to GPT (Globally Unique ID/Partition Table).  Now your Non-C: drives will not clash with BIOS.

The BIOS is looking for that MBR, but unknown and/or unseen "System Reserved/MBR" partitions are confusing the startup.

Now go into BIOS and select each non_C: drive and "disable" each as a non-boot drive.  This ensures that BIOS only has one hard drive to seek!  The list should only have your C: drive as active boot.

I hope this works for you, but read up about it, and also read the forums before you act.  Make yourself certain that my fix is valid.

is there not a more easier and simple way to do this, to confusing.......