Unable to boot from new SSD

David_683

Prominent
Apr 10, 2017
2
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510
I bought a new SSD and am trying to install it into my laptop and run Windows 10 from it.

Details:

  • SSD - SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 512GB NVMe PCI-Express
    Laptop - Asus ROG G751
    Bios - American Megatrends (latest update - 211)
    Windows 10 installed on old, slow HDD and booting fine
    Windows 10 installer placed on USB and appears to be functional

Attempt 1:

I used the clone tool in EaseUS to clone my existing HDD to the SSD. This created partitions successfully as well as the data, but when I rebooted it would not allow me to boot off the SSD.

Attempt 2:

I deleted all partitions (which were created by the clone attempt) on the SSD and tried to use the USB installer to install a fresh copy of Windows. The installer ran smoothly as far as I can tell, but when it rebooted to complete the install it took me to an error screen indicating that Winload.efi could not be found. I went to console and confirmed that the file does actually exist so it seems to be a problem with the boot loader accessing the file.

Settings/Observations:

  • I had to disable secure boot mode.
    I have enabled CSM
    I have set SATA to be AHCI
    When I view the SATA configuration screen it only shows the DVD drive and the HDD but not my new SSD

I have been trying to get this working for a week and nothing I've read online so far has helped. Any ideas?
 
Your SSD won't show under SaTA configuration, it's an NVMe/PCIe drive.

ASUS generally show it under "PCH Configuration" or similar.

As for it not booting, I'd suggest you remove the HDD temporarily to rule out conflicts.
You could then boot from the USB you created and use the 'repair' functionality. Not sure what happened, but it sounds like the bootloader is corrupt in some way.
 
Thanks for the response Barty1884. It's good to realize my SDD isn't supposed to show up as SATA (whoops!).

Unfortunately, unplugging other devices didn't help at all. The windows repair functionality doesn't work either.