Question PC upgrade issue at setting up

[TwelveBlues]

Hi, so after about 9 years I decided to treat myself and upgarde my pc. Initially thought on upgrading only my cpu, thus needing to get a new motherboard, as well as my case as plan to do future upgrades. I went for an i7 14700K and a Gigabyte Z90 Aorus Elite AX, respectively.

After all the show of disassembling my current pc and putting together the new one with the new and old components, came to the point of starting the set up, my understanding was that due to the mobo changes I needed to reboot my ssd and start from scratch, so I did, logged into the windows boot/installation usb, deleted/formated my drive and did the installation. Once Windows was running, I started to make its updates, as well as starting to install the most essential software, ie antivirus, gpu drivers, etc.

All seemed to be going well, had to do a few restarts as the installations requested me, and as I was seeing all going smoothly, I decided to shut down the computer and plug in my second drive, (I have 2 2.5" SATA SSDs), close the case, plug but my monitors to the gpu ( was using only one to the mobo for all this insallation) and get back to the set up process.

And then all went down hill, for some reason after turning my pc on, it got stuck on the Aorus BIOS logo screen and have not being able to pass that screen.

I have tried everything, checking the boot drive selected, restarting the BIOS, nothing worked.

So decided to go back a step, unpluged my second drive and didnt worked. So another step back and once again booted from the Windows installation usb, deleted everything and reinstalled windows again, restarted, all well, before moving on to all the previous software installations and upgraes, decided to shut down and plug the second SSD, the problem came back, stuck on the bios logo screen.

Have tried about lots of things, dont know why this happens, and once it does, the only solution I find is to format everything and reinstall windows, but again, all goes down once I plug the second ssd.

Does someone have an idea what could be happening?

Many thanks in advace!!

 

[skitz9417]

full specs list

 

[Misgar]

I decided to shut down the computer and plug in my second drive, (I have 2 2.5" SATA SSDs), close the case, plug but my monitors to the gpu ( was using only one to the mobo for all this insallation) and get back to the set up process.

And then all went down hill, for some reason after turning my pc on, it got stuck on the Aorus BIOS logo screen and have not being able to pass that screen.

Failure to boot after plugging in another drive is often because the new drive appears higher up in the boot list (see below).

I have tried everything, checking the boot drive selected, restarting the BIOS, nothing worked.

Sometimes it's not enough to check if your boot drive is at the top of the list. You may also have to configure how the drive boots up.

To explain. You may find two options for your boot drive. One option might include the manufacturer's part number for the drive. This will be familiar if you're used to Windows XP or Vista systems. The other option may read "Windows Boot Manager" and applies to more recent OS and UEFI.

A lot depends on whether your BIOS is set for old fashioned CSM boot or modern UEFI boot.
https://superuser.com/questions/1284392/what-exactly-is-uefi-with-csm-boot-mode

Your failure to boot after plugging in (and also after removing) the second SATA drive might be because you no longer have the correct setting in the BIOS boot menus. Adding drives can mess things up.

To recap, you may find you need to adjust several different boot menus.

1). Ensure that hard disks and SSDs are higher priority than other physical devices containing boot media. If booting from USB is set to a higher priority, the BIOS might hang if it detects a USB memory stick or USB hard disk plugged (without an OS).

2). Ensure your boot drive is at the top of the list when you have more than one drive plugged in. This can be more difficult to interpret if you have two identical SATA SSDs. Which one is which? The serial numbers might help.

3). If you find a BIOS section containing "Windows Boot Manager" try this as the first boot option.

Chances are your new installation of Windows was intact, but adding the second SATA SSD changed the boot order to an unbootable setting in the BIOS.

If you want to stand a fighting chance of avoiding this in future, connect your boot SSD to SATA port 0 on the motherboard (usually the first port checked in the BIOS for bootable SATA drives). If your boot drive was connected to SATA port 3 and the second drive to SATA port 2, 1 or 0, the second drive would rank higher in the boot list and take priority.

By the way, when you install Windows from USB, it's recommended that you disconnect all other drives from the computer, to avoid accidentally formatting the wrong drive. If there's nothing important on your second SSD and you've got backups, you could leave it connected when installing Windows. I prefer to keep things simple though.

Suggested Actions:

Check CSM/UEFI in BIOS. N.B. UEFI is the preferred option.
Install Windows.
Check boot settings in BIOS. It'll probably be "Windows Boot Manager"
Connect second SSD
Check boot settings again. Ensure they're as before.
Good luck.

N.B. For some reason I'm guessing you're installing Windows 10, possibly with Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 switched off in the BIOS. You might even be installing with a Local Account (as opposed to a Microsoft Account with an internet connection). Correct me if I'm wrong.