Gigabyte z170x gaming G1 boot problems.

[Baron]

In my PC I have the Intel 750 400GB, two x Samsung 950 M.2 250MB, and one Samsung 850 pro 256GB drives.
On boot up to the bios I click and select say an M.2 Nvme drive with either Win 10 or Win 7 on it and when it boots to the desktop, it always boots up with the Intel 750 drive.
 I can restart and select F12 to select the drive I want to boot with , but it always boots with the Intel drive.
I can restart and go to 'boot options, and select my drive hit 'enter' or 'save and exit' but again it is always the Intel drive that boots.
So just to make it clear it boots up with the Intel drive no matter what other drive I select, or try to select. This is recent as before picking my selection worked to boot with the drive I wanted.

This is using the F21 Bios.
I see that there are two new Bios's on the Gigabyte website, the F22b and F22d.
I don't use an Radeon RX Vega card, so I don't need the F22d.
But the F22b addresses: Update CPU micro code to fix HT flaw issue.

Would updating to this Bios help at all ?

I now wish I was using the old F7  Bios, because selecting the boot up drive was so simple, and it would boot with that drive until I decide to boot from another drive.
I have got my PC to boot from a selected drive, but it just revert back to the Intel drive the next time I restart, or boot the next day.

Is it just me being a noob at using the Bios features, or has anyone else had trouble selecting a drive to boot with ?

[shadowsports]

Greetings Barron,
Sorry to hear about your problem.  So what you are saying is that changes to your boot order are not be honored?

And specifically, using F12 to select a one time boot device works...  but using Boot Override in BIOS does not.  Am I correct thus far?

Which drive should be your boot drive?  For my own knowledge, can you confirm that only one of your disks has an OS installed?  This is to confirm that you are not trying to use your BIOS as a boot manager, which is not recommended.
 
F21 (final) has been the saving grace for Z170.  F20 was so unstable/unpredictable that it forced many to downgrade.   

Downgrading is actually possible, but its a PITA.  There is a downgrade thread if you want to look further into it.

What BIOS version do you have on your 2nd chip? 

Refer to the following pages in your manual (Pages 7, 23)

BIOS_SW - These can be changed to control which BIOS the machine boots from

CLR_CMOS Button - Near top right corner of board, can be used to reset the BIOS - This one is usually used to recover from an OC failure

CLR_CMOS Jumper - This one is typically used when the above fails.  It requires that you disconnect power to the board, but leave your MB Battery installed before shorting the header pins with a flat blade screwdriver. 

While troubleshooting, I would disconnect the other two disks, keeping only the boot drive you want the system to start from and DVD (if equipped) connected.  Note: I said disconnect in the first sentence, this is a important step for troubleshooting.

Options:
-Attempt to load Set Up defaults in BIOS (save) and restart, entering BIOS again then changing whatever setting are needed for the system to run.  (Results?)

-If your back up BIOS has F7, switch to it and be done

Use CLR_CMOS button and jumper to reset your BIOS, if for example you continue seeing the same behavior.  Important note   The ports you have your devices connected to could affect this behavior, so you might want to try changing the ports your devices are connected to, ensuring they are correct for the controller operate mode and hardware you have installed.  With only 3 drives, I believe you should be able to keep everything on the Intel controller, but you should confirm this using the hardware/port support diagrams on page 36 of your manual.  Moving them around could help.  If you do have a DVD..  move it to the AsMedia or GSATA controller.   

FYI: I'd stay away from the beta BIOS for the moment.  The hyper threading issue intel reluctantly acknowledged only affects a minute number of people.  Your chances of ever encountering the bug is extremely low.  I'd wait for a final myself.

This should give you some places to start looking at and working on.  Please post your progress and/or questions.  There are a bunch of good people here who can try to assist you. 

[ElectroStingz]

Hello,

This is recent as before picking my selection worked to boot with the drive I wanted.

Before what?
Did you change anything, are you using different drives than before.

Or did you just upgrade bios and now it doesn't work?

What I am trying to determine is, what exactly changed to cause this issue.

The older vs newer bios, perhaps the UEFI option has been enabled by default.
In the BIOS check and disable UEFI, change to legacy boot mode.

[Baron]

Thank you all for your advice/information. 

By restarting and hitting F12 to bring up the boot menu, I could use the 'arrow' keys up/down to highlight the drive I want to boot up with, then hit 'enter' and it would boot to that drive, but in the last few weeks or so, the chosen drive is ignored and it boots up with the Intel 750 drive with Win10.
Nothing has changed, except getting any MS updates installed.

My drives are: (which have been in my PC since I built it in April last year.)
Intel 750 with Win 10 64 on it.
Samsung 950 Nvme M.2 drive with a clone of Win 10 64 on it.

Samsung 950 Nvme M.2 with Win7 64 on it.
Samsung 850 pro with a clone of Win 7 64 on it.

Every now and again I want to boot up one of the 'clone' drives to update with MS.

I can either use the F12 boot menu, or into settings and go to the screen with 'Boot over ride' options.
But now every time I try those options the PC will just boot up with the Intel 750 drive.

I even used the Bios options to 'disable' the Intel drive, but that didn't work either.

Like I say, the old F7 Bios was a simple matter of going to the boot options, use 'page up/page down' to arrange the drives and putting the one I wanted to boot with as top of the list, and that choice would remain the same until I decided to change the boot order.

I applied the F21 Bios some months ago (knowing that it won't let me down grade to the F7) because I wanted to make the Bios ready in case I want to install the new Kabylake CPU.
I have not done so yet.

"The older vs newer bios, perhaps the UEFI option has been enabled by default.
In the BIOS check and disable UEFI, change to legacy boot mode."

Thanks I might just investigate that and see what happens. 

Also the Bios switch positions I will need to investigate (which being a bit dim rather confused me, but I am 71 years old.....and that is my excuse and I am sticking with it ) but I have to go out for most of the day, but will have a fiddle with later on.

Although the position that both switches are in, have been like that since the middle of last year.
I had a faulty Corsair AX860i - which constantly went into a boot loop, and I tried various switch positions in my quest to try and 'fix' things. I didn't and I RMA'd the PSU back to Corsair. This was the 3rd one, since the first and second all did this within a few months, and I settled for an HX850i as a replacement - so far so good.

Thanks very much for all your help, and will come back after some fiddling and lots of 'restarting' to let you good people know if I have fixed it or not...................as the famous Lawrence Oates said "I am just going outside and may be some time." 

[Baron]

Well, I had a quick fiddle today and checked the switch positions on both switches. Look at the front of the motherboard, the Bios SW switch is in position 1 and position 2. The SB is in the same configuration.
I changed the switches position when shut down, and then booted up, selected the Samsung 950 drive, and booted up, but it just booted with the Intel drive.

I also reset the Bios when shut down with the CMOS button on the board, went into the Bios to select 'Load optimized defaults' (or whatever it is) which also made no difference, so went back into the Bios to alter a few things.

I must be a bit dim, because I find this new F21 Bios to be a bit complicated for me, although it is a bit more colourful now, and for me a bit more difficult to navigate than the old F7 one in black and white. 

I will try again when I have more time to try and figure things out.
As for the two Bios switches, I am not really sure how they switch from one Bios to another,  and my manual is not very clear on this.........well, for me it isn't.