[SOLVED] Windows install drivers for Samsung 970 EVO on Z490 Aorus Ultra

[ShortCircuitChris]

Hi all,

Really hoping you can help me with a new system install, with:

• Z490 Aorus Ultra motherboard
• Single M.2 SAMSUNG 970 EVO Plus SSD 2TB
• Not raided (single drive)

The M.2 drive is installed in the M2A_CPU slot on the motherboard.

The BIOS sees the drive, so that's good, but when I boot the windows installer USB key it never finds the drive and prompts for drivers.
I ended up installing Ubuntu 18.04 temporarily and it has no trouble seeing the drive and installing.

So it sure doesn't seem to be a hardware problem, but Windows just can't find the drivers.

The samsung EVO support page has only .exe drivers, not a 'driver disk' I can feed to the windows installer.
The drivers on the motherboard support page seem like they are for raid drivers, etc, but not for single disk installs.

Based on other forums posts I've been reading I also checked that:
* Secure boot mode is disabled and I restored factory keys
* CPM is disabled

Didn't seem to help.
Please help, thank you!

 

[ShortCircuitChris]

Well -- weirdly, re-burning my windows installer flash key resolved this.
I read another forum post a few years ago where this had resolved someone's problem and decided to try it.

Honestly I was really skeptical it would work, as that flash key has word for other installs for me -- but it worked!

Thanks anyway to those who read it, maybe someone else will stumble on it in the future.