Cannot get Samsung 960 Evo to be bootable on Asus Z97-A/USB 3.1

[Agro]

Each time I install Windows 10 x64 on to the NVMe m.2 device it will reboot afterwards and then BSOD and say 0xc000000e.

The device works perfectly fine as a secondary regular device and I boot from my normal SATA SSD. I am using UEFI and M.2 enabled in the BIOS. Perhaps this board is just too old.... Any ideas?

 

[USAFRet]

Yes...not all of the Z97 boards are capable of booting off that drive.

I have a Z97 ASRock, and it also cannot. During my last major rebuild last November, I really, really wanted to put in an NVMe drive for that.
But alas...it is not in the cards.

 

[Agro]

Yes...not all of the Z97 boards are capable of booting off that drive.

I have a Z97 ASRock, and it also cannot. During my last major rebuild last November, I really, really wanted to put in an NVMe drive for that.
But alas...it is not in the cards.

I don't even know if any board that can take my LGA1150 4790K cpu would work. It may mean I'm forced to a newer generation 1151 or 2066 board, cpu and ram. That sucks because I'm not totally sure that other than the m.2 NVMe issue, that my system is inferior....

 

[USAFRet]

Yes...not all of the Z97 boards are capable of booting off that drive.

I have a Z97 ASRock, and it also cannot. During my last major rebuild last November, I really, really wanted to put in an NVMe drive for that.
But alas...it is not in the cards.

I don't even know if any board that can take my LGA1150 4790K cpu would work. It may mean I'm forced to a newer generation 1151 or 2066 board, cpu and ram. That sucks because I'm not totally sure that other than the m.2 NVMe issue, that my system is inferior....

Right.
I have that same CPU.

And in reality, the lack of booting from an NVMe drive does NOT indicate "inferior". IMHO, anyway.

In moving large data back and forth, sure...they're faster. But for the boot drive? Not so much.

 

[Calvin7]

Guide for installation. You can do a search for a guide for "USB memory stick with a UEFI bootable ISO of Windows 10" in step 5.

1- The M.2 drive has to be the only drive installed.

2 - Go into the bios, under the boot tab there is an option for CSM, make sure it is disabled.

3 - Click on secure boot option below and make sure it is set to other OS, not windows UEFI.

4 - Click on key management and clear secure boot keys.

5 - Insert a USB memory stick with a UEFI bootable ISO of Windows 10 on it, USB3 is quicker but USB2 works also. A Windows DVD won’t work unless you’ve created your own UEFI Bootable DVD.

6 - Press F10 to save, exit and reboot.

7 - Windows 10 will now start installing to your NVME drive as it has its own NVME driver built in.

8 - When the PC reboots hit F2 to go back into the BIOS, you will see under boot priority that windows boot manager now lists your NVME drive.

9 - Click on secure boot again but now set it to WIndows UEFI mode. (see #3 above)

10 - Click on key management and install default secure boot keys

11 - Press F10 to save and exit and windows will finish the install. Once you have Windows up and running, shutdown the PC and reconnect your other SATA drives.

I would also recommend installing the Samsung NVME driver at this point to replace the Windows one. (optional)

 

[geofelt]

Download the nvme ssd driver directly from Samsung and install that first.
It is not the generic driver.

 

[mechanich]

I have the exact same problem but I have a asus Maximus ix formula and a 960 evo m.2 1t ssd. I set it up just as you said. Windows installed no problem but when it's done and goes for the restart count down and restarts goes straight into windows install. So I figured take out the USB. And now it just goes back to bios. No windows boot manager available. Any suggestions?