ROCK installation on a NUC hangs

I’m attempting to install ROCK on a NUC8i5BEH I5-8259U. 8gb RAM, 128gb M.2 drive.
I get to this screen:

Welcome to the Roon Optimized Core Kit setup.
*Would you like to:
*1) install Roon Optimized Kit on this device?
*2) recover previous install of Roon Optimized Core Kit on this device?

*Please type a number (1-2) and hit enter.

Then it freezes. keyboard becomes unresponsive. Only thing to do is power off.

I’ve tried 2 different USB drives, used both Balena Etcher and Rufus to write the image to the USB. Re-downloaded the image. Double checked BIOS settings.

When I first received the computer, before attempting the ROCK install, it booted into Windows 11 just fine. After attempting the installation, no bootable OS was found on the SSD.

I followed the installation instructions and the bios instructions. When I encountered the problem, I reread and went over them again. Several times.

What should I do?

Hi Philip have you enabled legacy boot mode.

Pretty sure I had a similar issue with my last NUC, and found that it was hidden in the latest BIOS
There were a few settings that were not in the documents and I created a post (though it was for a Nuc10 as a few other users had the same issue)

Yes, of course. I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did without doing so.

What sort of keyboard?

Well that is when I thought it looked for your drive.

You can get to installation without legacy mode (me and many others have been there)
Depending on BIOS and NUC have you checked what is showing in Legacy mode and BIOS availability?

Sorry about 2 years since I went through this

Keyboard is wired - USB.

BIOS is latest version.
Boot settings are UEFI unchecked, Legacy Boot checked. Drive order:
SATA:Port 1: SK hynix SC311
USB: General USB Flash Disk 1.00

I appreciate your help!

The instructions say you do not need to uncompress the disk image file. Looking at some of the older posts, some say it should be.

thoughts?

That looks about right to me, in my case the option for the SATA disk did not exist.

I am assuming that the SK Hynix is the drive it’s going to install Rock onto.

I remember having a few failed attempts before finding the correct set-up, but Intel was making Legacy mode difficult to turn on at that time. It wasn’t pulling the disk up to install too and was therefore unable to continue, or did the installation but could not reboot into Roon due to issues with Legacy setup.

Hopefully someone that has more recent experience than me can point you in the right direction.

Balena Etcher will uncompress it for you automatically so that should not really make a difference.

My gut feeling is that the problem is in the ROCK image on the USB stick:
The machine boots, I hit F10 and the boot device menu comes up. I can move the selection via keyboard, so that’s functioning. I choose USB, the screen goes dark for a moment, then the introductory message comes up.
The machine must be reading the intro message from the USB drive, so we know it’s accessing it.
But the keyboard becomes non-responsive. Even the CapsLock light doesn’t go on or off.
Moving the keyboard to another usb port doesn’t do anything.

Maybe there’s a setting in Etcher?

Nope, Etcher doesn’t have settings to change.

Try a different memory stick if you have one and also extracting the image first, no harm but wasted time.

It might help work if you see anything different next reboot and install.

I know that there already was a somewhat similar thread in the past. I don’t have the knowledge or the hardware at hand to test it, but have a feeling that the fact that the install drive is not empty might play into this. Windows 11 is AFAIK an OS that relies on UEFI so an UEFI boot partition is already present on the drive. This might be a reason that the UEFI BIOS refuses to accept the legacy boot setting for that drive, the Roon OS installer can’t properly delete/reformat the drive or maybe other issues arise?
I would likely try to boot an UEFI aware Linux (using the UEFI boot mode) from a thumb-drive to delete all existing partitions on the internal SSD (SSD secure erase for example) before attempting to install Roon OS in legacy boot mode.

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I use rufus instead of etcher. Give tgat a try.

“used both Balena Etcher and Rufus” :slightly_smiling_face:

Sorry missed that.

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I completely blathered on yesterday, had I read the post properly? :flushed:

Hitting the Roon logo on the task bar results in an never ending search for my roon core. I am at the end of a Spectrum cable to a Spectrum modem to a Spectrum Router to a Windows 10 to the Roon search button showing the never ending search.

John, if you have a problem, please raise a new Support request and fill out the Support template with details of your setup. Jumping in on an existing support thread (and one that seems to be unrelated to the issue you are experiencing) will not help to resolve your problem.