Solved ASUS motherboard only boots to hard drive, not DVD's

Desktop computer is ASUS Prime Z590-P motherboard With Intel i7-11700K processor, 32G Ram. Lately my unit will not boot to anything but the C:\ drive, despite hitting the F2 or Delete keys on start-up. When entering the UEFI Bios, the only boot device visible on the boot tab is the M.2 location (C:\ drive) Boot Manager- no DVD drives are visible for selection. I use the DVD drives for backup & imaging services using Acronis, and am stymied here in that I can neither create a backup image or restore a previously created image. Any suggestions on how to recreate access to the DVD drives would be very welcome. Thanks for your attention.

It sounds like the DVD isn't being recognized by the system/BIOS. I would check to make sure it's connected properly

You have not mentioned anything about the DVD drives, what they are, where they're connected and how many you have...

My ASUS started literally falling apart as Win11 came out so can't replicate but if the BIOS shows the ODD/Optical Disc Drive then it may be possible to press F9, F10 or F12 to get a boot menu to choose which to boot to. I found it best to have a bootable DVD in the drive first, I use LiveDVD versions of Linux for testing.

@ljdarby

Try turning OFF (disabling), Secure Boot, in the BIOS.

Are the optical drives usable from within Windows?

I suppose that they are, but you didn't explicitly state that.

I use one to Watch DVD's but it is an External DVD that runs off a 3.2 USB port.

My Desktops have Internal ODDs as do a couple of older Notebooks but for the newer Notebooks I also have External USB drives and they can be booted to. Booting an External ODD is much similar to booting USB Thumb drives.

Booting to anything besides Windows, since the revocations, is problematic.
Temporarily turning off Secure Boot, will allow bootable non-Windows things... to boot.

This is why we had to rebuild the MR bootable rescue media.

Ofc, it could "also" be the ODD itself, as some have mentioned.

Dvd is bootable only if a uefi os is in the dvd.
New motherboards don't offer boot from dvd if they have legacy os in them.

Optical drives are becoming a thing of the past in today's systems. To make sure your recovery needs are covered in the future, my strongest suggestion would be to create an Acronis bootable usb drive rather than use an optical drive. Make yourself aware how or if Acronis has addressed creating new boot media to address the secure boot revocations that MS will automatically apply some time this year. I can not say, as I do not use Acronis. No matter what media one uses, it is smart to always make sure that recovery media will work BEFORE one gets into trouble and needs it.

Thanks for the multiple suggestions. I forgot to mention that both DVD drives (one Sony & one Pioneer) are working perfectly for all reads & writes, as well as burning stuff to them- they are hard-wired to the motherboard, not wi-fi or bluetooth. I entered BIOS and checked Secure Boot settings: only options are "standard" (where it was set to) & "custom"- changing to custom had no impact on my problem. I also uninstalled the two DVD's & reinstalled them to no avail. Will try to boot Acronis from USB & see if that works.

I doubt the Acronis image backup DVDs contain any bootable executables. You probably need to use a separate Bootable DVD/CD or USB-stick with Acronis recovery software.

SlicEnDicE said:

I doubt the Acronis image backup DVDs contain any bootable executables. You probably need to use a separate Bootable DVD/CD or USB-stick with Acronis recovery software.

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I used to use Acronis True Image, before it became the PC-dominating "Cyber Protect Home Office".

I never used it to image to an optical disk. I always made a drive image on an HDD. (Internal or external.)

I used TI to make a bootable USB thumb drive for the rescue function. I never made a rescue optical disk.

I do the same using my current imaging software, which is the paid version of Macrium Reflect. (I say "current", because I'm not thrilled with them moving to a subscription model.)

I would burn new Acronis Rescue DVD or better yet, a USB Flash Drive How to Boot from CD or DVD? - Ultimate Guide
Put the disc in and restart the computer and press F12. If the bootable disc is burned correctly, the DVD will show up as a bootable drive. If not, Try the disc on another computer, if that fails, go back to setup one create a bootable disc.
Be sure the disc is a DVD+-R and not an RW disc, as these my have issues if it was not Finalized after burning.

ljdarby said:

Any suggestions on how to recreate access to the DVD drives would be very welcome. Thanks for your attention.

Click to expand...

With your ASUS board you can enter a one-time boot menu by tapping F8 during system startup. I successfully booted a freshly made Macrium Reflect rescue DVD on both my systems using the F8 one-time boot menu.



And I can also see it in my Z590 UEFI (my System Two). Not sure why yours won't show up in your UEFI/BIOS.

Thanks for all the suggestions to my problem. Finally called ASUS since warranty on motherboard is still active. They had me clear CMOS and my problem seems to be resolved.