Question PC not booting/not seeing drives ?

[99StefanRO]

Hello!

Yesterday I installed 16 more gigs of RAM which led to a BIOS default reset. The thing is that since then my PC has not been able to boot from my M.2 SSD or any other drives.

My M.2 SSD is recognized but only appears in the boot priority list if I set secure boot off and set it to CSM. It doesn’t boot like this either.

I managed to boot the installer from a USB, deleted, repartitioned and reformatted it to GPT. I couldnt install windows them because… I think it was CSM and not UEFI with secure boot.

If I set to UEFI, regardless of the secure boot on or off, it loops me into BIOS and doesnt show any drives in the boot list.

I removed the new RAM sticks, tried all the combinations with them and it still doesn’t work, it is not the RAM that causes the issue.

I need help and advice, I am hopeless right now.

Msi B450 Tomahawk Max
Ryzen 5 3600
RTX 2060
16GB RAM

 

[Misgar]

When you put the new RAM in, the BIOS "retrained" because it found more memory. If you had XMP enabled for the old RAM, you should have disabled it before fitting extra memory. 4 DIMMs run slower than 2 DIMMs.

Start from scratch with the old RAM and just one of the SSDs you want to use as a bootable drive. Disconnect all other drives during Windows installation.

UEFI, GPT and Secure Boot are the norm these days for Windows 10 and especially 11. Older operating systems (Windows 7, Vista, XP) on boot drives under 2TB tend to use CSM and MBR instead of GPT/UEFI. Are you trying to mix Windows 7 and 10/11 on separate drives? It complicates matters considerably.

What version of Windows are you trying to install? If it's Windows 11, you normally have to enable secure boot/TPM 2.0, UEFI and GPT. You can get round this limitation by using Rufus to create a USB boot key with TPM disabled.

For easier troubleshooting, download a Windows 10 ISO and burn to USB. It's much less fussy about TPM etc., than Windows 11. When you've sorted things out you can try 11 again.

 

[Misgar]

Check your bootable USB key is set for GPT and not MBR, when installing Windows. If the key is set for MBR but the BIOS is set for UEFI, it won't install.

Use Rufus to copy the Windows ISO to a USB key. It shows clearly if the key will be UEFI/GPT only or capable of supporting CSM/MBR (if my memory serves me right). You need to match the key setup to the BIOS setting.