Help needed! Asus Prime Z490-a Disable Secure Boot State?

[skyorphan]

Hi, I am having an issue getting my Asus Prime Z490-a to boot into my Catalina install USB drive. I continually get this dreaded message:

I suspect that the Secure Boot State is my issue, but all of the guides and resources I have found tell me just to delete the PK key, or all the keys. I have tried this several times, (and tried reinstalling) but when I delete the PK I am stuck into “Setup/Audit Mode,” a term that even google couldn’t tell me much about, but that doesn’t sound the same as “disabled.”

I am at a complete loss here. The BIOS version is 2002, which is a version others on here have gotten to work, so I just don’t know where to go next. I’ve tweaked many BIOS settings but I continue to get the same message over and over. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I have set up another Customac two years ago but I don’t think I had this kind of problem on different hardware.

thanks!

 

[skyorphan]

I am continuing to have the same problem, and just in case it’s not showing up above, my hardware are the following:
Asus Prime Z490-A motherboard
Intel i510600K
Sapphire Pulse RX580 8GB

I would really appreciate some help from someone else who has built with this motherboard, as nothing I’ve found online will allow me to get past this step and boot into my USB.

Without being able to truly disable Secure Boot, I don’t seem to have any option of booting into the installer for Catalina. I’ve tried tweaking numerous other settings but nothing seems to affect this. Help desperately needed and much appreciated! At this point I’d be willing to pay someone for their time and guidance, as I’m not even sure what I could try next.

 

[skyorphan]

Still have had no luck disabling secure boot. I’ve tried everything I can think of, flashed updated BIOS, deleted the PK key, deleted all keys. When I delete the keys the Secure Boot mode is set to “setup” and I get nowhere. I even tried cloning my other working hackintosh system to my new SSD, and I can’t boot into that either. I don’t know what I have to do to get someone to see this thread, I’ve read the rules and I can’t get anyone to help me here. Is this motherboard garbage? I know Tony Mac himself built a machine using this same motherboard, so if it’s not my motherboard being broken, I don’t know what he did differently to make this work.
Please, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Pablitos19882]

Just clear CMOS directly from mobo

 

[Edhawk]

Have you set your Bios to run macOS? These are the settings you should be using:

Disable

• Fast Boot
• Secure Boot
• Serial/COM Port/Super IO port
• Parallel Port
• VT-d
• CSM
• Thunderbolt
• Intel SGX
• Intel Platform Trust
• CFG Lock (MSR 0xE2 write protection) This must be off, if you can't find the option then enable AppleXcpmCfgLock under Kernel -> Quirks. Your hack will not boot with CFG-Lock enabled
• For 10.10 and older, you'll need to enable AppleCpuPmCfgLock as well

Enable

• VT-x
• Above 4G decoding
• Hyper-Threading
• Execute Disable Bit
• EHCI/XHCI Hand-off
• OS type: Windows 8.1/10 UEFI Mode
• DVMT Pre-Allocated(iGPU Memory): 64MB
• SATA Mode: AHCI

Your system may not have all these settings, some may be hidden within other settings, CSM and UEFI booting being the ones to spring to mind.

You will also need to make sure your Graphics options are set correctly, i.e. Intel graphics enabled, and PEG or External set as default, so your RX580 is priority graphics option.

You may need to set the USB as the priority boot option in place of your Hard Drive or SSD, so the boot menu looks for this device first.

Alternative is to present the F8 key when the system boots to bring up the Bios Boot Menu, and then to select the UEFI partition on the USB drive as the boot device. This is a one time setting, you would need to do this each time you wanted to boot from the USB, if you don't make the USB the default boot device in your bios.

 

[skyorphan]

Have you set your Bios to run macOS? These are the settings you should be using:

Disable

• Fast Boot
• Secure Boot
• Serial/COM Port/Super IO port
• Parallel Port
• VT-d
• CSM
• Thunderbolt
• Intel SGX
• Intel Platform Trust
• CFG Lock (MSR 0xE2 write protection) This must be off, if you can't find the option then enable AppleXcpmCfgLock under Kernel -> Quirks. Your hack will not boot with CFG-Lock enabled
• For 10.10 and older, you'll need to enable AppleCpuPmCfgLock as well

Enable

• VT-x
• Above 4G decoding
• Hyper-Threading
• Execute Disable Bit
• EHCI/XHCI Hand-off
• OS type: Windows 8.1/10 UEFI Mode
• DVMT Pre-Allocated(iGPU Memory): 64MB
• SATA Mode: AHCI

Your system may not have all these settings, some may be hidden within other settings, CSM and UEFI booting being the ones to spring to mind.

You will also need to make sure your Graphics options are set correctly, i.e. Intel graphics enabled, and PEG or External set as default, so your RX580 is priority graphics option.

You may need to set the USB as the priority boot option in place of your Hard Drive or SSD, so the boot menu looks for this device first.

Alternative is to present the F8 key when the system boots to bring up the Bios Boot Menu, and then to select the UEFI partition on the USB drive as the boot device. This is a one time setting, you would need to do this each time you wanted to boot from the USB, if you don't make the USB the default boot device in your bios.

Thanks for your response.

I have all of those settings dialed in except:
1. CSM - if I disable this I lose access to all of my drives, USB, HDD and SSD, so I can’t even choose a boot disk.
2. Can’t find anything similar to Platform Trust
3. I don’t have a CFG lock option, and search results bring me nothing for Kernels or Quirks, and I see nothing similar anywhere in the bios. Is there another place I should be looking for kernel quirks? MSR 0xE2 also brings up nothing and I don’t see anything similar.
Any help from Asus users on CFG lock and those kernels would be wonderful.

Edit*: I am using Unibeast to make this boot device. Do I need to use OpenCore to configure these kernel quirks?

4. I don’t have VT-x
5. I don’t have Execute Disable Bit
6. I’ve tried OS Type Windows UEFI mode, but I’ve seen others say to use Other OS. Neither seems to make a difference.
7. Regarding the boot order, I lose access to all my devices and drives if I disable CSM.

 

[skyorphan]

Just clear CMOS directly from mobo

View attachment 529059

Thanks for the reply. I gave this a shot but it seemed to have the same effect as loading optimized defaults, and I still can't get out of Secure Boot.

 

[macdon]

I have the same motherboard as you and ran into that issue as well.

You'll need to convert all your drives which I'm assuming are MBR (Master Boot Record) to GPT (GUID Partition Map).

To fix this you'll need to reformat your windows os drive(s) and install Windows via UEFI mode with the GPT partition scheme.

see the 2 links below.

Converting a Data SSD or SSD with Windows* Installation from Legacy...

How to convert a Windows* installation from Legacy BIOS to UEFI and the partition table from MBR to GPT without data loss.

www.intel.com

How to install Windows in UEFI mode - fit-PC wiki

www.fit-pc.com

Good luck, I'm pretty confident this will fix your issues.

 

[Aluutaa]

My usb stick is formatted as GUID and will NOT boot, so what else would one look at?

 

[shaffy0227]

Hi guys,
Did anyone manage to solve this issue?
I am having the same problem atm.
However within "system information" it says my secure boot state is off which I think means that "setup" secure boot state technically means off right?