Hi, i have an old pc and i decided to turn it into a home server installing ZimaOS. I made the bootable USB by official site and installation goes well but when i reboot my pc without installation usb, it returns me “Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key”. I’m struggle with this problem and im not finding solutions. BIOS recognize my disk “AHCI P0: Sandisk SSD…”(the only disk), secure boot is disabled. I tried to install debian and all works fine. I tried to repair bootloader with boot-repair-cd but send me an error “Locked NVRAM”.
Someone has solutions?
I believe the installation actually completes, but the system can’t boot ZimaOS because the EFI entry isn’t being written to NVRAM. The “Locked NVRAM” message you saw from boot-repair is the giveaway. Even though the SSD is recognised in BIOS, without a valid UEFI entry the board simply doesn’t know what to start, so you’re dropped into the “insert boot media” message.
This often happens on older ASRock H61-series boards. They support UEFI, but the NVRAM handling can be unreliable. Debian boots because its installer is more tolerant and tends to force the boot entry through, whereas ZimaOS relies on the firmware accepting the write.
I suggest ensuring the SSD is using GPT and that CSM/Legacy is disabled so the board stays in pure UEFI mode. If you reinstall and still don’t see a proper UEFI boot target for the SSD, then I think the board is blocking new boot entries. In that case, it becomes a motherboard limitation rather than a ZimaOS problem, and it may not be worth trying to force a workaround. A newer board would resolve this straight away.
I understand wanting to keep the old hardware. You may be able to work around this, but it depends on how hard the board blocks NVRAM writes. If the BIOS refuses to store the EFI entry that ZimaOS creates, the system simply never sees it as a boot option.
One possible workaround is to install a small Linux first, let it create a valid EFI boot entry, then manually point that entry to the ZimaOS boot files. It can work, though it is a bit fiddly and not always stable. Another option is to keep a small USB plugged in and use it only as a bootloader while the OS runs from the SSD.
These approaches can get you going, but they are more hands-on. I think the limitation is coming from the motherboard rather than ZimaOS. If you prefer a clean solution, contact IceWhale support and see if they have an official recommendation for this board.