Question Since Win10 install, SSD not showing in BIOS after reboots, only on hard power on/off

[Entropy4242]

I recently installed Win 10, replacing my Win 7 installation, nothing has worked since. I made no hardware changes, just did a clean install of the OS after wiping the partitions on the SSD. Windows 10 frequently crashes after 5-10 minutes of use with a "Critical process died" error, and when it does, there is no boot disk found, and I get an error that says:
EFI Shell 2.31
Current running mode 1.1.2
map: Cannot find required map name.
Typing 'exit' will reboot, as will ctrl-alt-del, but in either case it will just repeatedly go back to this screen. Powering down the computer and immediately powering it back up will always result in a successful boot, but restarting it never will. On restarts, the SSD will not be listed anywhere in the BIOS.

I have an H81M-P33 motherboard, 2x 8GB RAM, and a Samsung 840 EVO 256 GB SSD. I also have an MSI GTX 760 GPU and a 1 TB HD, but I took them out before the Win 10 install. My system is as stripped down as it can go, and has been since I started trying to install Win10.

This all worked just fine with no issues in Win 7. My Win7 install was using the UEFI+Legacy mode of my BIOS, but I had to set it to just UEFI for the Win 10 install. This has to somehow be the source of my problem, since its the only thing that changed, but I can't figure out why or how to fix it. I also cannot right click on my start button, nothing happens except my mouse cursor jumps up and to the right by a few pixels. I suspect my Win10 install is corrupted in some way by the hard drive errors. I've reinstalled Win10 3 times now, and it has always had this freeze/restart issue, sometimes during the install.

Things I have tried or already checked, based on Google searches:
ACHI is turned on for the SSD
The SSD is formatted using GPT
Restoring BIOS defaults
Changing SATA cable
Changing SATA port (tried 1 and 3)
Reinstalling Win 10
Running diagnostics using Samsung Magician. SMART passed, benchmark looks ok, but sometimes causes the computer to BSOD while its running.
SSD is running latest firmware
BIOS is running 2nd newest, the newest just fixes the Intel Spectre Meltdown vulnerability
I have installed all windows updates
I've tried system restore but there is no restore point
Win10 Recovery gets about 75% complete then crashes and reverts all changes
running sfc /scannow finds no problems
I'm currently installing win10 on a HDD with the SSD removed to see if that "fixes" the problem, but even if it does, I want to use my SSD for my boot drive, and I'm not willing to just say the SSD is broken when it worked fine yesterday and all I did was install a new OS.

 

[Turtle Rig]

Ok I read everything your wrote. Im confused you installed Windows 10 on the SSD and Windows boots up just fine but you don't see it in the BIOS? If it boots up then what is your worry? I mean the BIOS should show it but if Windows installs on it and boots up then you really don't have a problem. But now I see you have disconnected your hard drive. There might be left over Windows 7 stuff on there and it gets confused and can not boot up. Why your BIOS doesn't see it is weird. After a hard boot up your able to go into WIndows but it crashes within minutes. What your going to need to do is format the 1TB HD and backup whatever you have in there onto the cloud or into a external drive. Then format the hard drive and also format the SSD. Then make sure you connected SATA1 and power connection is good as well and see if you can see it in BIOS. You might have to do a restore to defaults or optimized defaults on the BIOS. Lets say you see it or you don't but your able to format the drive and format the SSD then install WIndows 10 clean install into it after the format and creation of a new partition during WIndows setup and then I think you should be good to go. Something is up where you have left overs or old Windows folder either on SSD or the hard drive and by disconnecting the hard drive it is needing it and wants to read from it to boot up properly.

So to finish up, you need to connect SATA and power cable nice and snug and restore BIOS to defaults or optimized defaults then format your 1TB HD and backup the stuff before you do then connect it. Then at this point boot up and install WIndows 10 and do a format on the SSD and you should be good to go. After all this you can get back to me as to what happens and what not. Good Luck 🙈💯

 

[Entropy4242]

Thanks for reading my long post, but the problem is that Win10 is broken in a number of ways and routinely crashes within 5-10 minutes. After Win10 crashes, it will fail to see the SSD (and fail to boot because it can't see it) on the restart, and this is only fixed by powering the machine off/on.

Win10 doesn't know anything about my spare HDD. I took it out before I installed Win10, and I did a clean install of Win10 on the SSD (I wiped all the partitions before installing), so it should not be looking for any files elsewhere. I just mentioned the HDD to point out that no other HDDs or SSDs were plugged in, nor is my GPU. I've also already restored BIOS defaults (#2 in my list of things I've tried). And your suggested install method is essentially what I did.

 

[Entropy4242]

Installing Win10 on the HDD seems to have worked just fine, still using UEFI and GPT for that drive, I've had no crashes for about an hour. Seems conclusively like the SSD has a problem, but I can't imagine why installing a new OS would have actually caused that hardware to fail. I literally did not touch the SSD when doing the Win10 install, and the drive worked perfectly with Win7 yesterday.