2 NVMe drives on the Asus Prime Z370-A = BSOD w/Windows 10 Stopcode: Internal Power Error

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ubercake

ubercake

Splendid
Oct 28, 2009
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My hardware:
- CPU: 8700K (not OC'd)
- Motherboard: Asus Prime Z370-A
- GPU: EVGA 2080 Ti XC Gaming Black
- Various SSDs on SATA ports SATA_1,2 and 3
- NVMe drives on M.2_1 and M.2_2

I added a 250GB 970 EVO NVMe drive a couple months ago to the M.2_1 slot with no issues. Migrated my C-drive to it. I'm running Windows 10 from it. I've had absolutely no issues with this build... until now.

I received a 500GB 970 EVO NVMe drive as a gift a couple of days ago. I installed it on slot M.2_2 and migrated some of my applications to it. Everything worked fine initially until I let the PC go to sleep which is the first time I ran Windows since installing the new drive. When I hit the space bar to wake the PC, I saw a low-res BSOD with the Stopcode: Internal Power Error.

Subsequently, each time I start the PC, I have to start it twice?
1) The first start will always result in an infinite black-screen just after the Windows logo appears (with no "loading dots"). I notice the USB mouse and keyboard go dark at that point as well (although they are active prior while the "Enter BIOS" screen is present).
2) Then the second start... I hold down the power button for 10 seconds to turn the PC off. I then power back on and the PC starts up like nothing ever happened. Everything works great (that is unless I let the PC go to sleep).

I can move around the UEFI/BIOS no problem, so the problem seems to be once Windows 10 starts to load.

I have seen solutions that indicate removing and reinstalling the Samsung NVMe drivers, but how does one remove drivers for a disk on which the OS resides while continuing to use the OS?

I have composed this forum thread from this same PC and run BF V daily from this PC. Any operation of the PC, once the OS loads is fine. The PC works great on second start up, but you know something this consistent is wrong (when you have to power it on twice every time).

I would like to get a solution documented. It's probably something simple, but like I said I don't think uninstalling the NVMe drivers prior to re-installing them is an option when the OS is running on one of the NVMe drives?

Any assistance with this issue would be much appreciated.
 
Solution
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Hey ubercake (and anyone else experiencing similar issues), I usually lurk on these boards, but found your post when looking for an update to your exact issue so decided to make an account to reply.

So firstly, you're right - the solution you saw to uninstall the Samsung NVME drivers does fix the BSOD 'Internal Power Error' after awakening your PC from sleep. To uninstall, open 'Add or Remove programs' (press start and begin typing it to get to it). Then scroll down to the Samsung NVME drivers and uninstall. You'll be prompted to restart, and once you do the stock Microsoft drivers will be installed.

I saw this solution about a week or two ago from a different site, and decided I'd rather keep the performance gain from the Samsung...
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BIOS has been up to date (v 1601) since I received my step-up 2080 Ti from EVGA. It's the first thing I checked after I had the issue with this new NVMe drive. Given that I have been booting to a 250 970 EVO for a couple of months, I didn't think I'd have any issue BIOS issue. Although, the M.2_2 port on this motherboard (and many "mainstream" Z370 boards like it) is configured differently than the M.2_1 port. M.2_1 port is 100% PCIe. M.2_2 can be configured for SATA or PCIe x2 or x4. Either way, if you populate the M.2_2 slot, you give up SATA_5 and SATA_6 ports (they become disabled). I knew this going in and prepared for this situation knowing one way or another I'd be getting another NVMe drive.

The irony of it all is my first time after posting this thread (mind you after several previous restarts since installing the new 500GB NVMe drive) the PC seemed to load something at the sign-on screen and the problem hasn't happened since.

Windows fixed itself? I had been holding the power button and restarting on the extended black screen before the sign-on (which was probably some form of Windows update with absolutely no user feedback like many times... AWESOME!!!). When your boot drive is NVMe, you don't expect extended boot times at all; even with an update. This time was different for some reason.

I'm beginning to suspect feature update 1809 never really finished even though I kept checking Windows update and my status was up to date.

Sometimes I think Windows' own Ransomware Protection feature is blocking Windows updates.
 
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Hey ubercake (and anyone else experiencing similar issues), I usually lurk on these boards, but found your post when looking for an update to your exact issue so decided to make an account to reply.

So firstly, you're right - the solution you saw to uninstall the Samsung NVME drivers does fix the BSOD 'Internal Power Error' after awakening your PC from sleep. To uninstall, open 'Add or Remove programs' (press start and begin typing it to get to it). Then scroll down to the Samsung NVME drivers and uninstall. You'll be prompted to restart, and once you do the stock Microsoft drivers will be installed.

I saw this solution about a week or two ago from a different site, and decided I'd rather keep the performance gain from the Samsung drivers than to fix the BSOD issue (at the time, I just set my PC to never sleep since I'm in the habit of turning it off at night anyway). However, I too had the start up black screen issue. I have dual Samsung 970 Pro NVME SSDs, but I figured it was a graphics card driver issue related to my triple monitor setup until you connected the dots with your original post above. So today I uninstalled the Samsung drivers and not only has the BSOD issue been solved after sleeping, but I have yet to have the black screen when booting.

So it seems like I'll stick to the Microsoft drivers until Samsung releases a new driver. The performance loss is likely only seen/noticeable in benchmarks anyway.

To recap: from my (albeit limited) testing, the black screen upon booting AND the BSOD after awakening the PC from sleep seems to be connected with having the version 3 NVME Samsung drivers installed when you have 2 or more of their NVME SSDs in your rig. To solve, simply uninstall the Samsung drivers and reboot. I'll monitor for the next few days to ensure everything is still working correctly.

EDIT: Also I noticed with the Samsung drivers when booting, the windows logo screen would have a loading icon below it and would load for 3-ish seconds before moving to the black screen/login screen. With the Microsoft drivers however, the windows login screen only shows for a split second before moving to the login screen. So booting up is also faster.
 
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Solution


Is your OS located on one of the NVMe drives?
 
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Yes. I only have the 2 SSDs, no HDDs.
 
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Uninstalled the driver and restarted fine.

Ran the Samsung Magician performance test and got the following:
Before uninstalling the Samsung NVMe driver:
Sequential MB/s
Read: 3530
Write: 2488

Random IOPS
Read: 273,925
Write: 369,628

After removing the Samsung NVMe driver (using Windows 10):
Sequential MB/s
Read: 3551
Write: 2509

Random IOPS
Read: 273,925
Write: 357,177

The difference in write IOPS the second time around could be accounted for by any variable?

I'd say I'll just run with the Windows NVMe drivers. I'll shut down for a while and see if the next reboot works without requiring the double start.
 
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Reverting to Microsoft drivers actually hurt my read and write speeds a bit more than yours.

Regarding the original issues though - I can say that I've been using these drivers since I posted my first answer on the first, and the black screen after boot issue and the BSOD issue have been both completely resolved on my end. So I won't be going back to Samsung drivers until it's confirmed their future releases fix the issues. I'll take the slight performance hit for a stable system.
 
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Me too. My system restarts as expected again using the Windows 10 NVMe drivers. Also, as I noted above, the only performance that seems to have declined slightly is the Write IOPS, while sequential performance actually improved with Read IOPS staying the same. I'll run the test again to see if the result with Write IOPS was an anomaly.

Thanks for adding your experience and information on how to deal with this issue to the thread.

As you know, there is little information out there regarding how to handle this. Hopefully, this thread will help anyone else with two Evo 970 NVMe drives (as the problem never existed with just one NVMe drive in the system).

Maybe Samsung will release a new 4.0 driver soon as more people start getting additional NVMe drives (as their prices continue to fall)? We should keep this thread updated.

 
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Did you install the Samsung driver prior to installing the NVMe drive? Or do you run the Windows 10 driver?

The reason I ask is the instructions from Samsung are to install the Samsung NVMe driver prior to NVMe drive installation. I followed the directions and this was not a problem when I only had one drive.

Once I added the second NVMe drive a couple of months later, I started to get the black screen (after the BIOS screen) on startup - by which the Windows load would completely stall on the black screen with the drive activity light flickering - which eventually led to requiring two power on/power off sequences on every PC start up.

I probably would have had no problem if I had never installed the Samsung driver in the first place.
 
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From reading through a related thread on Samsung's community forums (not sure if I can post outside links here), it seems everyone with the issue has at least one 970 (EVO or PRO) in their build. Most have multiple 970s (like myself who had the issue), but at least one individual experienced the issue with dual 960s and just one 970.
 
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That's consistent with my setup too; two 970 EVOs. It alludes to why SR-71 isn't seeing the issue as it could be limited to the 970 EVO and PRO models.
 
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Ran the test again today on a fresh boot with the following results:
Sequential MB/s
Read: 3552
Write: 2506

Random IOPS
Read: 275,878
Write: 357,910

Consistent with the initial performance test following the removal of the Samsung NVMe V3 driver, the only thing slightly adversely affected by running the Windows 10 driver vs the Samsung V3 driver is the Random Write IOPS value. Every other performance indicator has improved.
 
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