Question Pressing "restart" in Windows leads me back to the BIOS where my drive isn't detected

[Deffodann]

When I click "restart" on my PC, it restarts into my BIOS. There, my M2 SSD isn't even listed. For it to be listed, I have to fully shut off my computer by either clicking shut down, or holding down the power button. There, the drive will be listed and I can boot into it... but sometimes it will just hang on the POST screen.

The windows logo will, at times, just not appear, and it will infinitely sit there on the ASRock Motherboard screen. To get around this, I found that I have to physically unplug my PC, or switch off the power supply, for at least 5 seconds before introducing power again.

After then do I make it past that screen, and the windows logo shows up.

These issues usually occur when I let my computer sleep for a long period of time instead of shutting it down. I opened up Event Viewer around the time of the last crash, where I couldn't click on any application on my desktop and, one by one, each program stopped responding. It was freezing like this, continuously crashing forever, until I force restarted.

In Event Viewer, there were dozens of Event 154's in a row, immediately at the time I was experiencing the crashing. I have 2 hard drives on top of my M2 running in my PC and I'm not sure how I can pinpoint which one is failing, when it does this without warning.

More information in my reply below, since it didn't allow me to attach an image.

 

[Deffodann]

Here's a screenshot of the event viewer since it didn't allow me to post an image in my original post.

Looking through my system information, I noticed a larger number of livekernal event failures and blue screen errors. There was an excessive amount of them happening multiple times a day. I ran Checkdisk on all 3 of my drives, and nothing was stated as abnormal. No bad sectors. Likewise, there was no sfc errors.

Could this be an issue other than a Hard Drive error? Like a memory or BIOS update issue? Or should I simply reinstall/repair Windows? I'm really not sure where to start, I have a lot on my PC that I don't want to lose by messing around with it.

If you'd like me to provide more information, I can provide it on request! I'll be watching the thread.

 

[DaleH]

Here's a screenshot of the event viewer since it didn't allow me to post an image in my original post.

Looking through my system information, I noticed a larger number of livekernal event failures and blue screen errors. There was an excessive amount of them happening multiple times a day. I ran Checkdisk on all 3 of my drives, and nothing was stated as abnormal. No bad sectors. Likewise, there was no sfc errors.

Could this be an issue other than a Hard Drive error? Like a memory or BIOS update issue? Or should I simply reinstall/repair Windows? I'm really not sure where to start, I have a lot on my PC that I don't want to lose by messing around with it.

If you'd like me to provide more information, I can provide it on request! I'll be watching the thread.

Google found this:
How do I initialize my SSD in BIOS?

Enable SSD in BIOS

Restart PC > Press F2/F8/F11/DEL to enter BIOS > Enter Setup > Turn on SSD or enable it > Save the changes and exit. After this, you can restart the PC, then you should be able to see the disk in Disk Management.

 

[DaleH]

Google found this:
How do I initialize my SSD in BIOS?

Enable SSD in BIOS

Restart PC > Press F2/F8/F11/DEL to enter BIOS > Enter Setup > Turn on SSD or enable it > Save the changes and exit. After this, you can restart the PC, then you should be able to see the disk in Disk Management.

If you can see it in the BIOS, then you go to Disk management to initialize it.

 

[Deffodann]

Google found this:
How do I initialize my SSD in BIOS?

Enable SSD in BIOS

Restart PC > Press F2/F8/F11/DEL to enter BIOS > Enter Setup > Turn on SSD or enable it > Save the changes and exit. After this, you can restart the PC, then you should be able to see the disk in Disk Management.

Thank you for the reply, but I couldn't find this option in my BIOS. The M2 drive doesn't even show up in the list of available drives while I'm here, unless I do the aforementioned fix of shutting down my PC fully. Even when doing that, however, I can't find that option.

I read up somewhere that the B5 ASRock motherboards have poor compatibility for NVME's, and that the XPG Spectrix S20G SSD that I own isn't the right type of drive for this slot on my motherboard. In this Youtube video, I even saw that I need to buy a new SATA M2 instead, or a PCiE adapter for M2's instead of using the slot on my motherboard. The man in the video is talking about the B450, but I have the B550 Pro4.

I'm considering buying an adapter, or an entirely new SSD.

This is what my disk management currently looks like:

The F: drive is an external. The C: is the M2 SSD. And the other two are older hard disk drives.