Question Won't boot to windows without pressing reset button twice

[Breadfish47]

I recently installed windows onto an M.2 SSD to improve boot time, but now find that my BIOS will freeze on boot. This is only solved by pressing the reset button twice (each time the BIOS freezes at a later point within the boot)
There seems to be a problem booting to the windows boot manager on the M.2 SSD that means it's only loaded after two resets, but I'm completely stumped as to why this is

The two stages of boot which the BIOS freezes at (number represents boot number):

1. Blank black screen
2. Asus TUF logo (should have windows loading circle underneath but freezes on just the logo)
3. Normal boot beyond both screens to Asus TUF with windows loading spinner, then continues to windows.

Any suggestions on the matter would be greatly appreciated as what should be a greatly improved boot time is now extended from resetting the PC twice beforehand.

Boot order of drives:

1. Windows boot manager - M.2 SSD
2. M.2 SSD
3. old SSD now used as storage
4. All other SATA drives

Specs:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Asus TUF x470
16GB Corsair Vengeance
Corsair Force MP510 - M.2 SSD in question (PCIe NVME if that helps)

 

[Darkbreeze]

When you installed Windows to the M.2 drive, did you DISCONNECT ALL OTHER DRIVES during the installation? If you did not, you need to do so, and then reinstall. It is likely that there is a problem with conflicting boot partitions existing on both connected drives OR that no new boot partition was created because the system already saw one on the other drive. This happens quite frequently and can result in anything from nothing at all to real problems.

Also, if the old drive is to still be used it is necessary that you use a partition manager to remove ALL existing partitions, including the hidden boot and EFI partitions, from that drive. Simply formatting the C: partition on that drive will not do the trick.

GParted -- A free application for graphically managing disk device partitions

gparted.org

 

[Breadfish47]

When you installed Windows to the M.2 drive, did you DISCONNECT ALL OTHER DRIVES during the installation? If you did not, you need to do so, and then reinstall. It is likely that there is a problem with conflicting boot partitions existing on both connected drives OR that no new boot partition was created because the system already saw one on the other drive. This happens quite frequently and can result in anything from nothing at all to real problems.

Also, if the old drive is to still be used it is necessary that you use a partition manager to remove ALL existing partitions, including the hidden boot and EFI partitions, from that drive. Simply formatting the C: partition on that drive will not do the trick.

GParted -- A free application for graphically managing disk device partitions

gparted.org

I disconnected all other drives on install after incorrectly installing the first time around, and on checking my old SSD in disk management the only partition available is a single primary partition that I use for storage.

Looking further into it now, I discovered when I installed windows incorrectly to the M.2 the first time around that it had created a recovery partition on another drive (they weren't disconnected for the incorrect install), but on deleting this partition I am unable to create a volume or extend an existing volume (I also have a recovery partition on the M.2 SSD after disconnecting the drives and reinstalling). Upon trying to do anything witht the unallocated space it returns a windows error: There is not enough available space on the disk(s) to complete this operation.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Use Gparted to remove any unwanted partitions on any or all drives. You can also use it to delete all partitions on a drive and then create a new partition on the drive using the full drive size, after which you can THEN create a new volume on the partition (D:, E:, etc.) and format it for use. I recommend using NTFS for any drives that will be used primarily with Windows.

Use this tutorial to learn how to not only remove ALL the existing partitions on the drive you want to install Windows on, but to do an actual CLEAN install as well.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

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