Multiple Crucial M4 Hard Drives not detecting as boot drive

[zoostory]

Hey guys, I'm totally stumped.

here's the deal. For a year, everything was fine, then my system started freezing, upon reboot, it says Reboot and select proper boot device, etc. Looking in the bios, it can't detect my 256G Crucial M4. After an hour or so, powercycling the drive etc, it will come back.

Here's what I have done so far to try and correct the error:

1) Installed a whole new mobo. Went from a Gigabyte to an ASUS Maximus Extreme

2) Upgraded firmware on Crucial, which I really thought was the problem

3) Bought a brand new Crucial 528G M4. Guess what, it happens with this drive too! it just freezes.

4) Upgraded to a clean boot of windows 8, figured, why not?

5) Run diagnostics on RAM, all seems fine

6) Upgraded Mobo Bios

7) Swapped out just about every cable, pulled everything but the drive, tried different SATA ports, you name it.


So.. I have no idea what it is. Is it yet another faulty motherboard? Is it something to do with my chipset or boot drivers? Arg! Very frustrating.

 

[RealBeast]

Sounds like a tough issue.

Are you using the Intel ports and AHCI mode, with just the Microsoft driver: msahci.sys ?

You can find this by running regedit and looking for this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci\Start it should have a value of 0 if it is the one you are using and you can check in your bios to see if you are using AHCI sata mode. Note, don't change the bios setting without first turning on the registry key or you will just get BSODs.

 

[zoostory]

What's weird is, I can't find that key at all. Searching and everything. I am on windows 8 - not sure if that matters. I was able to downgrade the firmware on my 256MB Crucial to the 000F firmware, and *crossing fingers* it's been holding strong for over a week. The 512 I purchased is a brick now, however. It wont show up no matter what I do. And I don't have another computer to cross check it on. In regards to the 512, it was a clean windows 8 install, nothing else installed. When I tried to install my video drivers, it bricked.

I am running AHCI mode.

Sounds like a tough issue.

Are you using the Intel ports and AHCI mode, with just the Microsoft driver: msahci.sys ?

You can find this by running regedit and looking for this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci\Start it should have a value of 0 if it is the one you are using and you can check in your bios to see if you are using AHCI sata mode. Note, don't change the bios setting without first turning on the registry key or you will just get BSODs.