New PC Stuck in BIOS With No Operating System Installed
Asked by
MellowPine42
I just built my first PC, but it won't boot past the BIOS screen. The motherboard's boot indicator was lit, so I changed the boot settings to use CSM, and the light went away. After that, the monitor showed a black screen even though it still detected a signal. The storage drive is blank and doesn't have an operating system installed yet. What should I do to get the PC working?
Answers
A blank drive won’t have anything for the motherboard to boot, so the boot light is expected. You need to create a bootable Windows or Linux USB installer on another computer, plug it into the new PC, and select the USB drive as the boot device. For a modern system, use UEFI mode rather than CSM or Legacy mode. You can usually leave Secure Boot enabled for a standard Windows installation, but temporarily disabling it can help if the installer won’t start. Once the operating system is installed, the system should boot from the internal drive.
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MellowPine42: That makes sense—I didn’t realize the drive needed an operating system before it could boot. I’ll create an installer USB and try starting from that with UEFI enabled.