I have an X399 based Zenith Extreme Alpha and...

[FalloutBoy]

they recently put out BIOS version 2501 to make this machine compatible with Windows 11 so off I go and install it because I want to run Windows 11 eventually.

This is where my problems began....

I use Macrium reflect to do Image backups of my system which has been working perfectly fine up until this point ; however I was cleaning the entire machine off because of the amount of crap that had accumulated and was going back to my previous clean setup - in doing so I struck the first problem, it did not matter if I tried booting onto USB through BIOS or if I held down shift and rebooted Windows and did a restart that way, the system would boot go so far through the windows PE process and then when it came to initialize the display - everything died. I tried the Macrium reflect restore USB from my other PC - same result, I tried a Windows 10 Install USB - same result, I could boot back into Windows but not onto USB.

I have a gaming KVM and I thought it might be the problem so I ripped everything out of that and connected it direct to the PC and tried again with all three USBs - no go.

I booted off of all three disks on my Alternate PC and they worked no problems.

While going through all these processes I noticed some visual oddities with BIOS and thus I turned off the BIOS animations and on the next boot I got a message while BIOS was initializing saying *EVALUATION VERSION* I was WTF!!! and on this boot and but no subsequent boots I saw and photographed a message that came up at the end of the BIOS initialization BlInitializeLibrary failed 0xc0000017, this was at the very end of post before USB boot began.

I then finally figured that it was the updated BIOS at fault and tried to use the BIOS switch on the back of the PC, the only problem was that the BIOS switch lights for A and B are obscured by my Noctua Heatsink and my graphics card so I had to download the previous BIOS onto a USB memory stick, go into BIOS and update it that way.

Well guess what kiddies on the next boot after having tried at least 50 times with the BIOS 2501 it works so BIOS 2501 is an evaluation BIOS and is EXTREMELY BROKEN and I had to go back to 2401.

BLOODY ASUS.....

So far for just this machine ( and people wonder why people hate ASUS 😞

Faulty ASUS Fan Software killed a 2950X - and I know its faulty because if I replace it with a certain piece of 3rd party software - the problems go away.

Faulty ASUS update software Stuffed up being able to update BIOS from the Desktop.

Faulty ASUS software would if you tried to control fans through the desktop cause the computer to crash.

Faulty ASUS software would read the motherboard temperature at a stupidly huge negative temperature and turn off the CPU fan ( thus my original Threadripper dying )

Faulty ASUS software that was supposed to let  you control memory timings would crash the PC just by running it. 

ASUS release an "EVALUATION BIOS" causing no end of pain, misery and wasted time.

BTW I have video and photos of the messages for BIOS.

The last time I struck an "EVALUATION BIOS"  was with a Toshiba Quosmio and they very quickly went "no, no, no you can't have an evaluation BIOS" and updated it very quickly because as far AFAIAA releasing evaluation BIOS's is illegal.

I would like a response please from the ASUS people who frequent here.

Needless to say I am less than happy.

[Silent_Scone]

Thanks

[FalloutBoy]

You wanted to know if the problem is fixed, the short answer is no.

I first of all was trying to use macrium reflect to restore my OS image and tools before upgrading to Windows 11 and then was going to re image the drive.

Then I was going to try and just re install windows.

In both instances I got the message EVALUATION COPY, I thought I had fixed it by reverting my BIOS to 2401 but was still having problems with the boot over rides not populating in BIOS.

While attempting to get them up and running and setting and unsetting different options to see if anything helped I again started receiving he EVALUATION COPY message toward the end of post before the list of hard drives gets printed by BIOS.

Note barring the internal HD's and SSD's on the machine there was no other media and the BIOS IS what is printing the message, it is doing it for 2401 and 2501 and seems to be triggered by some combination of bios settings in the last two menu options in BIOS...

It looks like now that I am going to have to track down this fault, determine its cause and do ASUS's job for them. I'm very unhappy about this/

[FalloutBoy]

Right while I don't know what the cause is I can tell you what seems to have triggered it..

I reset the BIOS to optimized defaults and started fiddling with settings, when it came up with EVALUATION COPY i hit load optimized defaults and hit F10 to save, I didn't save but it showed me what it would revert to return the system to optimized defaults.

At the moment every time I boot up before the end of POST where drives are printed by BIOS I get EVALUATION COPY..

Now I have proved it - can you fix it and the associated problems with the boot overides not populating this both BIOS 2401 and 2501