[SOLVED] Can't boot to recovery USB unless SSD removed

[magicalkhajiit]

Specs:

• ASRock Fatal1ty Z370 Gaming K6 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
• Intel Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
• Western Digital Blue 2 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
• Asus GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB
• FSP Group 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
• Intel 480GB SATA Solid State Drive - m.2 nvme

PC had to force shut down and won't boot to ANYthing. Only BIOS. Did all the troubleshooting steps for hours, from trying to trigger auto repair screen to CMOS reset, replaced battery, etc etc

Only removing the SSD did something. With it gone, recovery USB can finally boot!

If I put the SSD back, no matter the load order in bios or what's user-selected on start, it only go to black screen and hang there forever.

I saw another thread where they said it's possible a bad drive can prevent boot like this. But others said it might be BIOS boot order. I'm at wit's end with that since nothing is working except removing the SSD. I just want to make sure.

 

[Lutfij]

While in BIOS, does the SSD show up in bootable devices list? While you're in the BIOS screen, can you tell what your BIOS version is at the time of writing? As for your bootable media, are you referring to a recovery drive for the OS or another app/BIOS?

Try and take the afflicted SSD over to a donor system and see if you're able to either boot from it or that you can access the drive(as a stand alone drive), the latter tethered using an USB dock.

 

[magicalkhajiit]

While in BIOS, does the SSD show up in bootable devices list? While you're in the BIOS screen, can you tell what your BIOS version is at the time of writing? As for your bootable media, are you referring to a recovery drive for the OS or another app/BIOS?

Try and take the afflicted SSD over to a donor system and see if you're able to either boot from it or that you can access the drive(as a stand alone drive), the latter tethered using an USB dock.

Hi,
Yes it shows up in BIOS. Before I reset it was only showing as "Windows Boot Manager" followed by the SSD name, and now it shows both - still WBM and another option without that on front.

When I try to boot from it another thing that happens besides black is the "UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME" blue screen error.**

Bootable media are some USBs with Windows on.

Version I think might be: UEFI Version: Z370 Gaming K6 L1.05P

Unfortunately I don't have another system to test this SSD in. But I will try with a new SSD.

..

**Now I'm trying again with only the SSD in just to be sure and it's back to just being called Windows Boot Media + SSD numericals. It threw up the unbootable error again.

 

[magicalkhajiit]

I got a new SSD and everything works great now.

Out of curiosity I got a USB SSD enclosure to try to read the dead one. It freezes up my whole system when plugged in and:

• CrystalDiskInfo recognized it first, says Healthy 89%. Whatever that means, it seems like a lie:
• Windows was not recognizing it as a disk drive until I restarted in BIOS and removed it from Boot options.
• Then Windows recognized it as another drive in the list in file explorer, in Disk Management, and Device Manager. But I can't do anything with it, just freezes.
• Tried CMD > diskpart. Can't do "list disk" when it's plugged in at all, it hangs indefinitely.
• Now when I plug it back in, it gets recognized by all of the above for a few seconds but the whole system hangs, keyboard restarts, and then it just disconnects.

I'm guessing all of this means it's very dead. Oh well. Gotta figure out how to dispose of it.