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USB installation succeeds but boots into BIOS

Motherboard: Asrock B460M
SSD: WD SN550 NVMe

I used DD to write the sophos xg ISO to a 16GB Usb drive. I booted into that and went through the whole installer. Everything said OK.

At the end of the install it says remove installation media and reboot. I removed the USB drive then enter Y. System rebooted, flashed a black screen then went straight into the BIOS. No error, no messages at all.

Can someone please help me?

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0 rfcat_vk over 4 years ago

Hi,

the motherboard is a bit of an overkill. Your issue is more than likely one of the onboard NICs is not supported eg I219 If you ad another NIC, not 219 based .

Ian
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0 jason mac over 4 years ago in reply to rfcat_vk

Ha, the CPU is a bit of an overkill, I5-10600K.

I just grabbed an x520-da2 and after install it still does not boot, and instead goes straight into BIOS.
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0 rfcat_vk over 4 years ago in reply to jason mac

Hi Jason,

is the SSD in connected as a normal disk drive or connected through a specific motherboard connection. Try substituting a normal disk. I have always had trouble with Asrock motherboards and installing XG, their internal timer is different to other motherboards and does the bios install in default mode not UEFI and finally I assume it is a home version of XG you are using?

Ian
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0 jason mac over 4 years ago in reply to rfcat_vk

Yes, Home edition.

The WD SSD is an NVMe drive through the motherboards M.2 slot. It is recognized in the BIOS.

I'll grab a sata samsung SSD and see if that works
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0 jason mac over 4 years ago in reply to rfcat_vk

Connected a WD 1tb HDD I had laying around, but the installer doesnt seem to see it. Only the NVMe SSD.

I do have a debian live USB I can boot to, to diagnose the files theoretically installed on the NVMe ssd?
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0 jason mac over 4 years ago in reply to rfcat_vk

After some research it appears that this motherboard only supports EFI boot be default and will not allow legacy boot without a PCIe GPU (at least thats what the BIOS is telling me). So it looks like Sophos just doesn't support EFI installs??

Update: found this post: https://community.sophos.com/xg-firewall/f/discussions/122369/no-bootable-device-after-successful-installation

and the answered solution says that the ISO installs a non-efi bootable system despite the installer being EFI. Seems like an insane oversight on Sophos side???

I will be trying to use the solution in that post, but without networking (don't have any spare sfp connectors laying around) it doesn't look like I will be able to manually modify the sophos file system through a live system.
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0 Mike Scott over 4 years ago in reply to jason mac

Is it configured for UEFI or legacy boot? If UEFI, change to legacy.
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0 jason mac over 4 years ago in reply to Mike Scott

Asrock motherboards will not allow legacy boot without a PCIe GPU. That is a QUOTE from the bios itself. And after forcing it (throwing in any pcie card) it just boots with a black screen (unable to get back into the BIOS).
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0 jason mac over 4 years ago in reply to jason mac
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0 rfcat_vk over 4 years ago in reply to jason mac

Hi Jason,

the thing to remember with sophos is their software is designed for their hardware not us home users. We are a side benefit. In the past people have installed XG on another machine then moved the disk to the preferred machine.

ian
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