Question Unable to boot from Samsung 990Pro after installing OS via Boot USB

[MyPCNeverWorks]

Hello all, after a very frustrating evening and much searching I thought I'd ask here.

Mobo: Asus ROG Strix Z790-E
CPU: i7 14700k
Ram: 32Gb DDR5
Storage: 2tb Samsung 990 Pro NVME
Old storage: 120Gb sata SSD

After replacing my cpu, motherboard and ram I thought I'd be best performing a clean install of windows. My old setup couldnt support booting from NVME so my OS was kept on my 120Gb SSD but the new components do so I've formatted the NVME and tried installing Win10 to it (despite the specs, windows pc checker says my setup wont supporr win11).

I've installed windows 10 to the nvme drive but its not showing as a boot drive in the bios. I've tried redoing the install with CSM on/off, fast boot on/off, all other drives removed and sata disabled, VMD disabled/enabled and nothing seems to be fixing the issue.
If I try boot from the nvme when it is an option (CSM on), I get the "please insert a suitable boot drive or media then press any key" error.

When I put my old OS drive in, file explorer shows all the win10 files to be present on the nvme so it did install but my bios wont boot from it?

The bios sees my nvme as a storage drive, file explorer sees it but Samsung magician does not and the bios boot priority does not.

Am I missing something here?

Any help is much appreciated!

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Where did you source the installer for your OS? Disconnect all drives except for the one you intend to have the OS on. As for the OS, you don't need to go through the internal OS upgrade path to get to Windows 11. Simply recreate your bootable USB installer for Windows 11 and then reinstall the OS onto the new SSD, without any other drives hooked to the platform.

 

[MyPCNeverWorks]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Where did you source the installer for your OS? Disconnect all drives except for the one you intend to have the OS on. As for the OS, you don't need to go through the internal OS upgrade path to get to Windows 11. Simply recreate your bootable USB installer for Windows 11 and then reinstall the OS onto the new SSD, without any other drives hooked to the platform.

Hello! I used the Windows Media Creation tool to get the file. I originally used the USB option in the tool but after facing issues I found a guide where they said the USB option tends to mess up and that you should pick the ISO file option then transfer it to the USB using Rufus.exe.

Thats good to know for the OS. I could try with Win11 then but I imagine I'll hit the same issue. When trying to install Win10 I had unplugged all drives.

 

[TerryLaze]

When I put my old OS drive in, file explorer shows all the win10 files to be present on the nvme so it did install but my bios wont boot from it?

While in windows from that old ssd download and run the free version of easybcd, go to the bcd deployment tab, select the nvme and select write mbr, select the OS partition on the nvme and install BCD, then go to file and select BCD store and load up that new bcd you created on the nvme, then go to add new entry and change the drive letter to whatever the nvme drive shows up as at that moment.

I found a guide where they said the USB option tends to mess up and that you should pick the ISO file option then transfer it to the USB using Rufus.exe.

USB tends to mess up if you change the bios to always boot up from usb first instead of selecting the boot override which only boots from usb one time, in the first case windows sees the usb as the first boot device, because it is, so it sets things up to run from that usb.

 

[dwd999]

What did you do when you initially formatted the nvme? Formatting is not necessary and its easiest to just run the installer with a totally unallocated drive. The one thing you do need is for the nvme to have a GPT partition table header. If you accidentally installed an MBR partition table header that may be why its not working. Use the Z790-E's bios to secure erase the nvme so that its totally blank and try again proceeding from there.

 

[MyPCNeverWorks]

While in windows from that old ssd download and run the free version of easybcd, go to the bcd deployment tab, select the nvme and select write mbr, select the OS partition on the nvme and install BCD, then go to file and select BCD store and load up that new bcd you created on the nvme, then go to add new entry and change the drive letter to whatever the nvme drive shows up as at that moment.

USB tends to mess up if you change the bios to always boot up from usb first instead of selecting the boot override which only boots from usb one time, in the first case windows sees the usb as the first boot device, because it is, so it sets things up to run from that usb.

Hi,

Thanks for the info regarding the USB. I was setting it as the primary rather than selecting the USB to override boot order.

As for your earlier bit, am I understanding correctly that in doing those steps I would be formatting a modern nvme drive as an mbr and therefore treating it like a legacy HDD?

 

[TerryLaze]

As for your earlier bit, am I understanding correctly that in doing those steps I would be formatting a modern nvme drive as an mbr and therefore treating it like a legacy HDD?

No, this tool is not changing the drive, mbr is the master boot record that is a small bit at the beginning of the drive that tells the OS what to do next (read the os/uefi) the mbr would also keep the info about partitions on old disks and that's why they use mbr to mean both things, easy bcd will only update the boot info to make the nvme a valid bootable drive.

 

[MyPCNeverWorks]

What did you do when you initially formatted the nvme? Formatting is not necessary and its easiest to just run the installer with a totally unallocated drive. The one thing you do need is for the nvme to have a GPT partition table header. If you accidentally installed an MBR partition table header that may be why its not working. Use the Z790-E's bios to secure erase the nvme so that its totally blank and try again proceeding from there.

Thank you very much for this! I followed various steps for the reformatting originally.

Option 1. Use command prompt to format the nvme as gpt.
Option 2. Reformat the nvme in disk management then use option 1 before booting from the USB.

A mix of things has fixed this issue but I think using secure erase was the key. For anyone else with this issue of installing your OS to an nvme drive (as it seems common with ASUS and the Samsung 990 Pro) I've put the steps I followed below although this is what I did to get my System working. Note that this is just what I did so I am not responsible if following the same steps causes issues or lost data should anyone attempt to follow the same steps.

Symptoms: Nvme not appearing as boot drive option after installing windows in bios but is listed as a storage device, no windows boot manager next to any drive in bios, error with only nvme installed saying please insert bootable device or boot media after win10 install (i had to activate CSM for it to be a boot option to get this error).

What I did that fixed it:

1. I used the Windows Media Creation tool to create a boot disk (USB). I downloaded the ISO file and used Rufus (a free app) to move the file to the USB (some forum posts said the install direct to USB option has a tendency to cause bugs / fail etc).
Note* in the final troubleshooting steps I did the above method for both win10 and win11.

2. I turned off the PC and disconnected all other hard drives, ssds and nvmes (except for the one I wanted to install too).

3. I booted the PC and went into the bios menu. I used Secure Erase (ASUS, Advanced (F7), tools) to completely wipe the nvme drive I'm installing the OS to. THIS DELETES ALL DATA ON THE DRIVE!
3.1. Previously I followed steps to format the nvme as GPT but DID NOT do this for the working method as I instead did the secure erase in step 3.

4. I set the bios to the following:
Rapid Storage Technology: Off (this was default, on the ez mode bios screen and recommended on numerous forum posts)
On advanced mode (F7), boot:
Secure boot: other OS and custom
CSM: disabled (some posts said this being enabled can cause the windows installer to get confused and install incorrectly which is likely why after installing win10 earlier, my nvme only showed as a boot option if CSM was enabled but then threw an error)
On boot configuration > fast boot: disabled

On advanced mode > advanced tab, on the System Agent (SA) configuration, I set VMD to disabled (some posts said this caused issues when enabled but you may need it enabled for RAID i believe.

5. I Saved changes and reset

6. I booted into bios again incase it could see and try boot from the now empty nvme. I clicked boot options in the bottom right and selected the USB. The pc rebooted from the USB.

In the installer: when on the hard drive screen I could only see my nvme (and possibly the USB, I cant remember now). If you're trying to follow this and didn't use secure erase or unplug other drives, you may see other partitions but this method may not work for you as I think whatever secure erase did was a key point and other drives connected can mess up the install.
7. I selected the nvme drive, clicked new and it prompted me before it created some partitions needed for the install. Once done I selected the primary partition and proceeded to the install and let it do its thing until the countdown to restart then pressed the key for bios on reboot.

8. Once the PC restarted, I re-entered bios and checked that my nvme was the priority boot 1 option. (This should be listed as "Windows Boot Manager (Samsung 990Pro) Etc)
note* If you reordered this earlier for USB to be priority instead of selecting boot option > USB, you can get stuck in the install loop If you dont tell it your nvme is priority 1 in the order.

8. With my nvme as priority, I saved and reset. My pc booted from the nvme and continued the win10 setup without a hitch. Same outcome for Win11.