[SOLVED] SSD with Windows 11 installed on it is no longer recognized by Mobo ?

[Darksider13]

Build Specs:
ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula
AMD 3900X
64 GB DDR4 3200mhz
RTX 2080 Ti
Samsung 980 Pro 2TB x 2 (one is Windows boot other is extra storage)
OS: Win11 (Pro I believe?)

I haven’t the faintest idea as to what the heck is going on here.

My desktop is running Win11, with the most recent updates. Everything has been peachy keen for months without issue. Suddenly today I’m using my pc, working, updating my games to get ready to play - and out of absolutely nowhere my OS starts to get really slow to the point of Task Manager not opening and Ctrl+Alt+Del not triggering anything. I can move my mouse but I can’t interact with my OS beyond that.

The PC hangs for about 5 mins. I say “that’s weird” and I manually shut it down since I can’t pull up the menu to shut it down from within windows.

After turning my PC back on, my mobo no longer recognizes my Win11 install on my 980 Pro. The last hardware change I made was nearly a year ago and I just added another M.2 drive for expanded storage. No major software changes (beyond updating game files) either.

I started messing around with my mobo thinking that was the root of the issue. I get into the BIOS and it reads that all of my storage devices are connected but it won’t recognize my main M.2 as a bootable drive UNLESS I enable CSM. Though even then, it recognizes my main drive is bootable but considering it’s GPT and not MBR, it won’t actually boot when I select the drive in BIOS. For safety’s sake, I updated my BIOS to the most recent stable version and it actually did help improve responsiveness in my BIOS menus but the update didn’t solve my problem.

Because CSM will get me nowhere, I disable it again and build an Ubuntu install and a Win11 Installation Media on two different USBs. With CSM disabled, my desktop reads both as bootable devices. I launch into Ubuntu first and check to see if anything happened to System32 or other folders inside Windows. Nothing, nada, everything is untouched. No files seemed to be missing and I can read data from the drive just fine.

I then launch into my Win11 usb in UEFI and try to run a startup repair. It starts diagnosing and attempts to solve whatever problems it finds but stops shortly afterward and says it has printed out an error report in Windows/Sys32/Logfiles/SRT/SrtTrail.txt. I go back into Ubuntu and check to see if I can open that file and it does not exist in that directory. So now I have no clue what the error even is here.

Outside of this one issue, nothing seems to be going on with my desktop. I haven’t the faintest clue what happened, how it happened, or why it happened.

Am I stuck having to reinstall Windows? I already ran into that problem a couple years back because of a mistake I made and it took me a week to get everything back to how it was pre-drive wipe. I’d really like to avoid that if possible here. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Colif]

Windows/Sys32/Logfiles/SRT/SrtTrail.txt

thats a boot error

Clean install of windows is generally best answer to this one.
I would use ubuntu to copy anything off C you want to keep and clean install Windows 11

and out of absolutely nowhere my OS starts to get really slow to the point of Task Manager not opening and Ctrl+Alt+Del not triggering anything. I can move my mouse but I can’t interact with my OS beyond that.

The PC hangs for about 5 mins. I say “that’s weird” and I manually shut it down since I can’t pull up the menu to shut it down from within windows.

its odd it happened while windows was running, I would check health of boot drive as the behavior is worrying

 

[Darksider13]

thats a boot error

Clean install of windows is generally best answer to this one.
I would use ubuntu to copy anything off C you want to keep and clean install Windows 11


its odd it happened while windows was running, I would check health of boot drive as the behavior is worrying

Dammit. I had a feeling that was the deal. Gonna be a fun weekend… Any suggestions on good tools to use to scan M.2 NVMe health?

EDIT: Figured out why the Windows/Sys32/Logfiles/SRT/SrtTrail.txt file doesn't exist. Found out through chkdsk that the whole drive is somehow write protected. Managed to run chkdsk in read only mode and it found about 20 errors all related to an update to a game on Steam I had just finished downloading before problems started. Tried running diskpart to clear the read only attribute and diskpart said it failed to change disk attributes for whatever reason. Unsure how drive became write protected in the first place but it makes sense now why SrtTrail.txt file isn't where it should be.

 

[Colif]

could use Ubuntu to change SSD to read/write
but formatting it should do the same

https://www.tenforums.com/drivers-hardware/63241-cant-access-ssd-media-write-protected.html

I would still be a little concerned about health of drive as it shouldn't just crash mid operation and set itself to write protected. Sounds like it was possibly trying to stop something. Just a guess.

 

[Darksider13]

could use Ubuntu to change SSD to read/write
but formatting it should do the same

https://www.tenforums.com/drivers-hardware/63241-cant-access-ssd-media-write-protected.html

I would still be a little concerned about health of drive as it shouldn't just crash mid operation and set itself to write protected. Sounds like it was possibly trying to stop something. Just a guess.

Tried that in Ubuntu and Diskpart. Nada. Drive won’t budge out of read only mode, can’t even format it.

Took your suggestions about the drive not being healthy and called Samsung support. They told me if it’s stuck in read only mode it’s basically toast. Gonna RMA it. Was feeling pretty lucky that the three 980 Pro’s I got have all been working like a dream, should’ve known at least one of them would have a problem.

Thanks for your help

 

[Colif]

At least they have 5 year warranties so it won't cost anything. except time.