Boot issues with Ryzen 2400G and A320 motherboard

[maheshn]

Well, after a long long time, I ran into boot issues with a newly assembled system. Before diving into it, the system specs/questionnaire:

Purpose of system? General use, for a relative who's a schoolteacher. Will be running Ubuntu 18.04 or later (compulsory, for school related work). Would like multiboot with windows for personal use too.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 2400G
Motherboard: ASRock A320M Rev 4.0 with latest BIOS
RAM: Adata 8GB DDR4
Graphics Card: None
Drive: Kingston 120GB SSD
Optical Drive: Has a LG DVD RW
Sound Card: None
PSU: Corsair VS 550 (with White Label, latest revision)
Overclocking: No, will not do. ever.
Monitor: Samsung LS22E360

The monitor, ODD, cabinet, keyboard & mouse are all hand-me-downs. CPU, RAM, Mobo, SSD, PSU are new.

The normal procedure what used to be followed for multiboot was install Windows, then install Linux, and both would appear in the Linux Boot Menu.

The issue faced was that for any reason, Windows 10 *would not* allow itself to be installed. Variations tried out included (i) Installing from USB (both from USB2 ports and USB3 ports), (ii) Installing from external USB DVD Drive, (iii) Installing from internal SATA DVD-RW. At the partitioning stage, it would give an error message saying "Windows cannot be installed to this device". Googling produced plenty of results for something similiar, saying the drive needed to be partitioned as GPT, etc. It didn't help. This triggered another series of experiments with partitioning as GPT, formatting, then alternately as MBR and formatting. Neither worked. Also, enabling/disabling secure boot also didn't help. Eventually, we gave up trying to install windows and tried to go ahead with Linux. Now it too threw errors during partitioning. We knew the drive was a good one and not damaged, so we stuck it in a USB adapter, formatted in in another PC and then installed linux, finally it booted ok and is now working like a champ.

My question was only why the Windows 10 refused to get installed? Going through AMD's own literature, it says it doesn't support Windows 7 on the 2400G, but it does say that it supports Windows 10. Only no amount of trying worked. Any clues on what was happening?

 

[chetansha]

How did you create the USB installer? Using something like Rufus or the windows media creation tool? If something like Rufus, then ensure you selected the UEFI+GPT (not MBR) mode of writing the ISO and try installing again?

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[maheshn]

Tried rufus, GPT mode.

P. S. I also have an original Win 10 USB. it didn't work either.

 

[chetansha]

Tried rufus, GPT mode.

P. S. I also have an original Win 10 USB. it didn't work either.

Select uefi+got mode and try it

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[whitestar_999]

May be your win 10 install image is corrupted(I always recommend matching official sha1 hash of the windows iso before using it as source for making bootable medium).

 

[maheshn]

May be your win 10 install image is corrupted(I always recommend matching official sha1 hash of the windows iso before using it as source for making bootable medium).

Thanks, will try it later when we get the time. Didn't think on those lines, esp. having an original Win10 USB.

Edit: Finally got it installed. Like Cheransha said it needed creating USB with UEFI+GPT Mode, it needed selecting UEFI from the BIOS *and* disabling secure boot. The disabling secure boot was what finally was needed. (It was buried deep oin Rufus's FAQ).

Thanks all!