Solved For those with new systems having Win 11 preinstalled: Is there still a BIOS option for CSM / legacy mode?

Ghot · Oct 25, 2021

Dru2 said:
Some desktop boards allow you to capture images of the BIOS/UEFI. Here you install a USB stick and press F12 to capture an image...

Mines the same. My USB stick was NTFS though.

barman58 · Oct 25, 2021

hsehestedt said:
...

Note that when running under Win PE or Win RE you have no option but to run at native screen resolution. So, as an example, if you have a 15 inch 4k laptop screen, your recovery media is forced to run at 4k (3840 x 2160). You have no choice in the matter. In the past, this presented problems for a lot of recovery media because they simply didn't scale well to such high resolution on a small screen. Most manufacturers have solved this, but some have not.

The scaling on some of these is so bad that it is practically impossible to navigate the recovery media. I don't have a screenshot right this moment, but trust me, it's so bad that many graphical elements are simply missing from the screen so navigating the menus is pretty much impossible.

...

In case you are wondering, no, it is NOT Macrium that is affected by this. They scale properly on small high DPI screens :)

The issue is also a Windows one, with Windows 10 at least, (have not had chance to trial Windows 11 with a Higher Res Screen but I assume any parts of the OS that retain the old style menus or settings retain the same issues ).

With the internal OS apps such as the control panel, and the Windows menus accessed from within an adapted application where the UI is scalable (automatically or Manually), the display is often unreadable on 4K screens - one of the reasons that the new style settings is being phased in although this is not going at an acceptable rate.

I use a lot of image processing applications which in the main are well designed and scale automatically onto a 4K screen - And also often have controls to adjust the display to meet user needs or preferences .
As soon as you need to access an OS menu then the text in these are unreadable as these have not been changes since windows Vista or earlier. There is an option to adjust these text items, but it is badly implemented and often then causes issues with windows itself. I find that with most setups on a 32" 4K I can get a compromise that works ( I do not have great eyesight ), on my Laptop which has a 17" 4K it is unusable unless I use my close up (reading) Glasses, which gives issues with seeing anything but the screen.

The complete OS rendering engine needs to be updated for the times we Live in

SIW2 · Oct 25, 2021

hsehestedt said:
Unfortunately, theory and reality are not the same. I have a brand new motherboard that was released this year (2021) which still has CSM as an option.

I also disagree with the assessment that the OS has nothing to do with it. Windows 11 is the first OS that technically supports ONLY UEFI mode although they have made concessions to allow unsupported hardware. Since any technically supported installation of Win 11 has no need for CSM, the logical question was whether any of the OEMs were jettisoning CSM since it is no longer needed.

I had a good reason for trying to find this out, in fact, it may determine the future development of a product that is in development by a major software vendor.

However, I do appreciate the feedback. Thanks!

Oem prebuilts likely wont have csm support.
What happens in the custom builders retail sector could be different. So you might be able to buy a mobo from asus /gigabyte etc to build your own machine, which has very different capabilities from the things oems churn out.

If you are unfortunate enough to suffer from lack of csm, it is still possible to run win7 and even vista without it.

barman58 · Oct 25, 2021

Are there any downsides immediately from running a Copy of Windows 11 on a Motherboard that still retains the option of CSM, although this is not in Use ?

That is one of the questions that will be asked in the development meetings of the OEM motherboard manufacturers - there is a cost to make any design change in any industry and so we may see the CSM option disappear over time as new designs are developed but unless there is a pressing reason to remove something that can be disabled as it is now a lot of companies will not spend money to do it

SIW2 · Oct 25, 2021

Ghot said:
Mines the same. My USB stick was NTFS though. :)

My bios needs fat32 stick for bios pics. Though it doesnt need fat32 to flash the bios , or to efi boot an os.

I reverted back to the previous bios partly to see if that does the same. It doesnt. Only the most recent bios for this mobo has those features. Very useful.

The weird thing is my 1904v3 winpe bsods on this machine if efi booted from usb . It is fine when bios booted from usb. I can efi boot it on my other machines without any issues.

I was curious if that bios update on this machine was the culprit, but it bsods the same with the previous bios as well.

I have no idea why.

zbook · Oct 25, 2021

If new motherboards are only UEFI native (without CSM) it may impact those attempting dual boots:

Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Considerations - Windows drivers

Provides information about Trusted Platform Module (TPM) considerations.

docs.microsoft.com

Dru2 · Oct 25, 2021

Ghot said:
Mines the same. My USB stick was NTFS though. :)

My board doesn't require any formatting of the USB stick, nor any specialized sticks. FAT32 works just fine :wink:

If you're stating you need to format to NTFS just to capture a BIOS image, I'd call that extremely odd :scream:

Dru2 · Oct 25, 2021

barman58 said:
Are there any downsides immediately from running a Copy of Windows 11 on a Motherboard that still retains the option of CSM, although this is not in Use ?

"not is use" would mean CSM is disabled, where "in use" means CSM is enabled to allow the system to handle legacy things like a GPU where the GPU is not UEFI supported. This is one of the big reasons for CSM... old GPU's without UEFI support.

In an attempt to answer the question (and perhaps I misunderstand the question) you can very much run Windows 11 with CSM disabled as shown in my post with the BIOS image (post #18). Here I did a clean install with the BIOS settings as shown. There are absolutely no issues.

barman58 · Oct 25, 2021

Thanks that's what I thought

I too am running without CSM, With UEFI, Secure Boot and fTPM, all on, ( though in my case on Windows 10 until I can make time to switch to Windows 11 on the Main systems - I am in the middle of software testing and do not wish to add any other parameter changes, like a new OS :wink:

)

This means is there is no pressing reason to remove the CSM options from motherboards, so developers will be likely to not make any changes until they have to or there is no longer any further need for the options, it also means that I had not missed anything :wink:

Dru2 · Oct 25, 2021

barman58 said:
Thanks that's what I thought

I too am running without CSM, With UEFI, Secure Boot and fTPM, all on, ( though in my case on Windows 10 until I can make time to switch to Windows 11 on the Main systems - I am in the middle of software testing and do not wish to add any other parameter changes, like a new OS )

Yeah, I remember you saying you were testing some photo editing software?

barman58 said:
This means is there is no pressing reason to remove the CSM options from motherboards, so developers will be likely to not make any changes until they have to or there is no longer any further need for the options, it also means that I had not missed anything

I wouldn't use the word pressing, but with today's hardware, most notably GPU's, there really isn't a reason to keep as an option.

That said, I know Gigabyte boards have CSM enabled by default as they don't know what hardware the end user is going to use when building a system. Can't speak for other vendors like Asus as I've only used Gigabyte boards for the last 12 years.

Anyway, for me, I've always disabled it since I have no "legacy" hardware, and the fact that (for Gigabyte) you can't enable Secure Boot with it enabled as Secure Boot doesn't handle "legacy hardware".

barman58 · Oct 25, 2021

Yeah, almost all of the main Photo editors have released new versions in the last weeks , it's Adobe Max Virtual conference for the next three days and the opposition always try to "Gazump" Adobe. there are some major changes to Adobe Lightroom due for release at Adobe Max, will hopefully get my upgrade tomorrow - Photoshop changes have been kept under wraps, so it will either be a mild refresh or something immense

Ghot · Oct 25, 2021

Dru2 said:
My board doesn't require any formatting of the USB stick, nor any specialized sticks. FAT32 works just fine

If you're stating you need to format to NTFS just to capture a BIOS image, I'd call that extremely odd

My BIOS "won't" save screenshots on a stick formatted NTFS. It "wants" FAT32.

Dru2 · Oct 25, 2021

barman58 said:
Yeah, almost all of the main Photo editors have released new versions in the last weeks , it's Adobe Max Virtual conference for the next three days and the opposition always try to "Gazump" Adobe. there are some major changes to Adobe Lightroom due for release at Adobe Max, will hopefully get my upgrade tomorrow - Photoshop changes have been kept under wraps, so it will either be a mild refresh or something immense

As a subscriber to both Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, I always look forward to new releases so thanks for the heads up

I guessing you're one of the beta testers for Adobe's products? That's pretty cool there :)

Thanks.

Dru2 · Oct 25, 2021

Ghot said:
My BIOS "won't" save screenshots on a stick formatted NTFS. It "wants" FAT32.

Yeah, but you said...

Ghot said:
Mines the same. My USB stick was NTFS though. :)

Which kind of confused me, thus my reply. But yes, FAT32 works just fine :)

barman58 · Oct 25, 2021

@Dru2

Just a long time user - I think I signed up for the Photography plan the day it was released and so maybe get the releases a little early but that could be related to the timezones - Quite often the release due on a particular date will be available in the morning so several hours before new york

The updates for tomorrow will come via the CC app as usual so you should get them tomorrow too

The Adobe Max is available for anyone to "attend", and free , not sure if you have to sign up - I always do as then I get reminders

Adobe MAX 2023 Creativity Conference Asia Pacific | 11–12 October

Attend in person in Los Angeles, CA or join us virtually. Learn, be inspired, and connect with others. Conference is Oct 10–12, preconference is Oct 8–9.

max.adobe.com

barman58 · Oct 25, 2021

For anyone with an interest in Photography and Design the Adobe Max pre show has started and continues with various topics until 3pm Pacific Time

Behance

SIW2 · Oct 25, 2021

Ghot said:
My BIOS "won't" save screenshots on a stick formatted NTFS. It "wants" FAT32.

As far as I know, they all want fat32 for bios screenshots.

Ghot · Oct 25, 2021

SIW2 said:
As far as I know, they all want fat32 for bios screenshots.

Uh, yeah. That's what I said back in post... #21.

Dru2 · Oct 25, 2021

barman58 said:
@Dru2

Just a long time user - I think I signed up for the Photography plan the day it was released and so maybe get the releases a little early but that could be related to the timezones - Quite often the release due on a particular date will be available in the morning so several hours before new york

The updates for tomorrow will come via the CC app as usual so you should get them tomorrow too

The Adobe Max is available for anyone to "attend", and free , not sure if you have to sign up - I always do as then I get reminders

Adobe MAX 2023 Creativity Conference Asia Pacific | 11–12 October

Attend in person in Los Angeles, CA or join us virtually. Learn, be inspired, and connect with others. Conference is Oct 10–12, preconference is Oct 8–9.

max.adobe.com

Thanks. Appreciate the info. Maybe I'll look into Max to see what that's all about. And yeah, I signed up for the Photography plan shortly after it came online as well.

Thanks

Mark Phelps · Oct 28, 2021

iko22 said:
Is that on budget machines, high end machines, or on all HP machines? But you are right, need does not always translate to reality.

Good question -- but I don't have the answer. I'm not active there anymore, so all I can recall is folks having issues trying to boot from USB sticks and finding out there was no CSM or Legacy option on their newer HP PCs. I think it was mostly laptops -- but did not pay close enough attention to be sure. Sorry I don't have more detail info.