Win10 fails to install on NVMe 960 m2

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skycaptn

skycaptn

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So a little bit about the system, custom built MSI Z270 gaming MB (brand New) it has 2-m.2 slots, i7-6700, 1080 Titan, 32GB mem. The guy is upgrading as he has the $$ to do so. He recently purchased a NVMe 960 evo m2 Samsung 500gb ssd. He had an old mechanical drive that Samsung magician wasn't compatible with so the data transfer utility would not work. So he purchases a new copy of win 10 from the MS store and downloads it to a 3.1 thumb drive. He downloads and installs the updated bios that now recognizes the ssd as a boot device and sets it as the secondary boot device after the thumb drive. As he starts the boot mngr and selects the thumb drive and win10 install begins. He is able to select the device after choosing custom install. The installation seems to complete to the point where windows needs to reboot to continue installation and after it reboots it takes him right back to the setup screen where you choose the ssd to install windows on...I'm scratching my head here, at this point its beyond my knowledge. any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Solution
P
if the installation was successful in creating a bootable UEFI SSD, it should have created a uefi boot entry called "Windows Boot Manager" the points to the boot partition of the SSD to the folder \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BOOTMGFW.EFI

You can try to manually add a uefi boot entry to point to that.
The following is for a Dell, i have never configured another system for UEFI boot other than a Dell but i will assume it is similar
https://www.wavesys.com/support/cannot-boot-windows-bootable-device-not-found-error-after-initializing-drive-dell-e6x30-syst

If nothing else create a new USB drive. Use the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

It does correctly create a UEFI bootable USB...
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Computers Taste Like Metal

Computers Taste Like Metal

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You want to set your first boot priority to SSD. Save changes, and reboot. When booting into PC, there should be a button to press where you can select a drive to boot to, not changing priorities, it's a one time thing. For me, it's F11. Choose the USB, and install again, deleting the old windows partitions when prompted to.
 
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skycaptn

skycaptn

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we tried that it did exactly the same thing each time
 
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skycaptn

skycaptn

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tried that also, when rebooting pull the thumb drive takes you to the F11 boot menue and it wont finish installing when the ssd is selected
 
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skycaptn

skycaptn

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We are getting little to no help at all from msi as to wht the settings in the bios that need to be changed. Also we did install the samsung NVMe driver
 
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skycaptn

skycaptn

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skycaptn

skycaptn

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I think we tried this with him and myself on the phone allthough
I'm going to try this with him tomorrow when he brings it over, it's too late tonight. Over the phone I can't be sure he understands that the bios be in UEFI mode.
 
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skycaptn

skycaptn

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tried this
 
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Paul NZ

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Cant remember where I got this from, but this is what one site / it may have been here. It says

It may work for some mobos and not for others. Dunno I dont have an NVME to see if this works

1 - Make sure you unplug all SATA and USB drives, the M.2 drive has to be the only drive installed.

2 - Go into the bios, under the boot tab there is an option for CSM, make sure it is disabled.

3 - Click on secure boot option below and make sure it is set to other OS, Not windows UEFI.

4 - Click on key management and clear secure boot keys.

5 - Insert a USB memory stick with a UEFI bootable iso of Windows 10 on it, USB3 is quicker but USB2 works also. A Windows DVD won’t work unless you’ve created your own UEFI Bootable DVD.

6 - Press F10 to save, exit and reboot.

7 - Windows will now start installing to your NVME drive as it has its own NVME driver built in, I don't think this would work with previous versions.

8 - When the PC reboots hit F2 to go back into the BIOS, you will see under boot priority that windows boot manager now lists your NVME drive.

9 - Click on secure boot again but now set it to WIndows UEFI mode.

10 - Click on key management and install default secure boot keys

11 - Press F10 to save and exit and windows will finish the install.

Once you have Windows up and running, shutdown the PC and reconnect your other SATA drives. Do not put anything on SATA port 1 as this is now reserved for the NVME drive.

I would also recommend installing the Samsung NVME driver at this point to replace the Windows one.

The background here is NVME SSDs do not appear within the BIOS until Windows creates the system partition with the EFI Boot Sector.

Your M.2 SSD contains UEFI driver information within the firmware. By disabling the CSM module Windows will read and utilize the M.2-specific UEFI driver.


Make sure you do not use SATA port 1 from that point forward!
 
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ZZZEARRR

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It would be useful to know which version of the motherboard you are working on: M7, M5 or M3? The M.2 connectors share bandwidth with other ports (SATA1, SATA5-6, U.2, PCI_E4,... depending on the version of the motherboard and the M.2 port that is used) Is it possible that another connected device steals the bandwidth of the M.2 port your Samsung is plugged to? On the Z270 GAMING M3, for example, the M.2_2 port shares bandwidth with the PCI_E4 port. A wifi card could prevent your SSD from working. There is probably an option in the bios to choose which slot the bandwidth is to be attributed to, although, the easiest way to find out if this is the problem seems to be by disconnecting every component except the Samsung.
 
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skycaptn

skycaptn

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It's M5, the manual shows with an NVMe in the m2-1 slot all sata ports are available. In the m2-2 slot sata ports 5 and 6 are unuseable
 
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kango69

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Have a read on this thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/4054tj/troubleshooting_cannot_boot_samsung_950_pro_in/
I read on other threads that you have to set the "M.2 SEx-RST PCIe remapping" to get the SSD to work correctly.
This thread tells you how to activate that option.
 
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skycaptn

skycaptn

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the Compatibility Support Module (CSM) is not in this bios version I think that was a product of bios versions for win 8, I could be wrong. This shouldn't be this difficult in this day and age. this is BS
 
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skycaptn

skycaptn

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Well we tried everything, even tried to get support from MSI but they wouldn't answer us. Tis is what we did accomplish.
(1) we were able to set the MSI bios so that the boot order listed the M2 device
(2) we were able to change the compatibility setting from win 7 to win8_10 and that allowed us to change the boot node to UEFI
(3)We used msi tool to add the NVMe drives to the windows 10 ISO for the installation thumb drive.
(4) we installed win 10 on the NVMe but could never get it as a bootable drive.
MSI has a board explorer in the bios and all the sockets that had anything installed showed up on the board explorer except the M2 device. This board has 2 m2 sockets and it was the same in both sockets
The only way the nvme 960 would show up in the boot log (f11 on start-up) was in legacy UEFI mode and it wouldn't show up as a UEFI drive.

AFAIC the MSI Bios leaves a lot to be desired as a Full control bios other than the over clocking capabilities in the bios the rest is just less control than some of the other bios that I've seen. The person I was helping to get this installed has decided to return it until such time as there is more support. If anyone out there gets a Samsung NVME 960 evo m2 to work as a bootable windows 10 ssd with an MSI BIOS, Please post it to these forums because a lot of people are looking for answers.

 
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psoohoo

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if the installation was successful in creating a bootable UEFI SSD, it should have created a uefi boot entry called "Windows Boot Manager" the points to the boot partition of the SSD to the folder \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BOOTMGFW.EFI

You can try to manually add a uefi boot entry to point to that.
The following is for a Dell, i have never configured another system for UEFI boot other than a Dell but i will assume it is similar
https://www.wavesys.com/support/cannot-boot-windows-bootable-device-not-found-error-after-initializing-drive-dell-e6x30-syst

If nothing else create a new USB drive. Use the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

It does correctly create a UEFI bootable USB drive.

 
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Blaine_33

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How exactly do you install the NVMe driver in the windows installation boot? I have a Z270 Gaming M5 Mobo, two 250GB 960 Evo M.2s, and am trying to install Windows 10 Enterprise. I can put my bios in AHCI mode and run the windows 10 installation and see the M.2s independantly and install the OS to one of them, however, when I put the bios in Raid mode and create a raid with both M.2s, then when I load the windows installer, it does not detect the raid configuration. I contacted MSI Tech Support, who basically told me that I had the settings correct in the bios, and that it "should be working", but that was the extent of "support' they offered, besides telling me to go to Samsungs website and download the NVMe drivers and when I get to the window in the installation prompting me to select the hard drive I want to install to that I can load the driver there. But the only NVMe driver I found was an .exe to install to an already existing OS. How do I get the driver ready to load to the windows installation? I read that you said you used the MSI Tool to create a windows 10 installation boot with the NVMe Driver on it... it sounds to me like you got at least a step further than I did with this. but I'm getting burnt out of trying to get this to work... I've lost a lot of respect for MSI and Samsung for their lack of instruction/support for something that both companies advertise as a viable option to have a faster computer.
 
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