[SOLVED] windows not detecting nvme

overcharge

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Nov 14, 2019
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So I have a fresh install of windows 10 and everything has been working fine until a few hours ago. I forced shutdown after I had finished gaming for a bit by pressing and holding the power button on my case and come back a few hours later and my BIOS doesn't detect my nvme which is a 970evo 250gb and only detects my kingston a400 ssd and wd blue HDD.

I'm not sure why this has happened so any help is appreciated. My nvme was formatted as a GPT after converting from MBR to initially install windows. Will it have just automatically changed to MBR when I forced shut down it?
 
Solution
Looks like the boot partition is too far gone to "fix".

Either recover from a previous known good full drive backup, or...a fresh install..:(
Why would you force a shut down rather than simply shutting down normally? I'm assuming you DO mean that you held the power button down until it actually completely powered off WITHOUT going through the shut down procedure that happens when you just press the power button and release it or choose shut down from the Windows start menu?

Was there some kind of problem happening that required you to shut down that way or am I misunderstanding the procedure you used to power off?

Shutting down could not ever cause the file partition type to change. Nothing can do that, short of actually changing it manually. What COULD happen is the boot record or manager could get corrupted with an incomplete shut down.

I would go into the BIOS and make sure it is set to the Windows boot manager as the first boot device. NVME drives are sometimes not visible in the BIOS other than as "Windows boot manager" when one is present and has Windows installed on it.

Also, I would disconnect those other drives until you sort out your boot issues, to avoid confusion. When you did a fresh install of Windows, were those drives connected to the system? Because if they were, and if they EVER had Windows installed on either or both of them, then could be the entire reason you are having boot issues.

If that is the case I would recommend that you try to reinstall Windows with them disconnected, and then you can reconnect them AFTER you install Windows, but you want to use a partition manager or disk management to find the old Windows partitions which are typically hidden except from within disk management or a partition management utility, to find and remove those EFI, system, restore or boot partitions from the old drives so they do not confuse the boot loader when trying to boot.

It might also be a good idea to first disconnect those drives and then do a hard reset of the BIOS first, in an attempt to refresh the hardware tables.


BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes, press the power button on the case for 30 seconds. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.
 

overcharge

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I didn't click shutdown. I just quit out of my game and discord then just held the power button down. Neither of the other drives have had windows ever installed on them and I connected them after I did thee fresh install on windows so that shouldn't be the problem. The nvme usually comes up as Windows Boot Manager in the BIOS but now only shows P4 Kingston SSD (I think) and P5 WD something. I did try boot without the other 2 drives installed but went straight to the BIOS.

I won't be able to try re install windows until I get back home but I will try the BIOS hard reset.
 

overcharge

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I've taken out the CMOS battery and reset the bios which hasn't changed anything. I'm not sure if I should be changing any settings. I used my USB to get to the command prompt and used diskpart which does show that the drive is there. The nvme is the only one installed so only 2 disks show up one being 232gb which is the nvme and a 7000mb something which is my USB.

What can I do now to try boot because it still doesn't detect it in the bios and when I boot it goes straight to the Bios. I have a gigabyte ab350 gaming (not gaming 3)
 

overcharge

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No it does not appear in the bios and it does not boot from it. However it is detected if I use my USB to get to the command prompt then type diskpart, list disk. It shows it as a 232gb drive which is the only drive currently plugged in and is the nvme because it is 250gb. It shows my USB as well as a 7000+ mb drive as it is a 8gb USB stick.

Other than that there is no real sign of life
 

overcharge

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Without the USB the PC beeps as usual then goes straight into the BIOS and when I go to select the boot options, there are no drives.

When booting with the USB it automatically goes to the screen where you select the language, time and keyboard options. I then click continue or something then repair your pc is an option on the bottom left which I click. I then get the screen where I can continue, use a device, trouble shoot or turn off PC. I select Troubleshoot then get options and you can see in the images what happens.
View: https://imgur.com/a/D8glYlQ
 

overcharge

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So any idea what caused the issue?
I did get a blue screen yesterday with critical structure corruption in the middle of a CS:GO match and wouldn't boot for a while then worked. Is this a possible cause after shutting it down?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
So any idea what caused the issue?
I did get a blue screen yesterday with critical structure corruption in the middle of a CS:GO match and wouldn't boot for a while then worked. Is this a possible cause after shutting it down?
What prompted you to do the hard shutdown?
Doing that could very easily corrupt data.

Or, whatever caused you to do that in the first place.
 

overcharge

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What prompted you to do the hard shutdown?
Doing that could very easily corrupt data.

Or, whatever caused you to do that in the first place.
idk why i just pressed and held the power button. Pretty stupid of me
lesson learnt and I will now always use the start menu to shut down and let it do its thing
thanks for the help
 

overcharge

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I've just installed windows off the USB but it still isn't being detected. It shows when I use diskpart on the USB but doesn't show when in BIOS or going through the install process. I have made sure it is GPT not MBR
 

overcharge

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It appeared in the install process before, but not now?
I installed it then it wouldn't boot. I did take the USB out and in diskpart it does show it has 4 partitions with 0 free space. I then went through the boot process again and it didn't show up as a drive I could install it on