[SOLVED] Is my Mainboard or SSD faulty?

[StraightFromIt]

Hello,

I have an MSI B450 Tomahawk Max and a Crucial MX500 M.2 SSD, on which I installed Windows. Up until yesterday everything ran fine, but then my Pc crashed, I got a bluescreen (I think the error code was unexpected_shutdown_error) and it said it needed to gather information. It stayed at 0%, so I shut my Pc down and tried to power it up again, but all I got was the message that I should insert a bootable hard drive or select one.

So I opened the BIOS, but I couldn't find the M.2 SSD, only my second SSD that is connected to a Sata port.

I updated my Bios, which didn't solve the problem. I also tried to boot from an USB drive which also didn't work, after a lot of loading I just got another bluescreen (error code: driver_pnp_watchdog, which should indicate a hardware problem I think, but it can't be the USB drive, because I used it to update the Bios before that).
I also took out the CMOS battery and put it back in after a few minutes, but that didn't help either.
Also it takes a lot longer now for the logo of the Mainboard to show up with the text "press Del to enter BIOS..." and it isn't as responsive as before (it takes longer for the Bios to open, but inside itself everything runs normally).

Am I correct in thinking that my Mainboard is the problem and probably broken and not the SSD? Sadly I don't have another Mainboard or device with a M.2 slot to test the SSD.

Thanks in advance, all help is appreciated.

 

[jay32267]

At this point, I would suspect the MB over the SSD because not only didn't it see the M2 SSD....it didn't boot from the USB stick....and the logo takes longer to come up.

 

[StraightFromIt]

That was my thought as well. I just wanted to make sure I replace the right part. At the beginning I was pretty sure that it has to be the Mainboard, but then I read some other threads where they also suspected the RAM for example, but they never had the exact same problem, so..

 

[jay32267]

That was my thought as well. I just wanted to make sure I replace the right part. At the beginning I was pretty sure that it has to be the Mainboard, but then I read some other threads where they also suspected the RAM for example, but they never had the exact same problem, so..

When it comes to things like this...I find that sometimes the best you can do it make your best hypothesis based on what you have an go with it...and yes...sometimes I'm wrong...but I do the best I can.

 

[StraightFromIt]

All right, thank you for your help. I'll send my Mainboard in then and hope for the best

 

[jay32267]

All right, thank you for your help. I'll send my Mainboard in then and hope for the best

You're welcome. That's what I would do.