[SOLVED] Issue with MSI B450M MORTAR MAX and Kingston A2000 NVMe SSD (SSD recognised on first boot, but not after)

[PeterNL]

[SOLVED] 
This did turn out to be an issue with the motherboard. I have since replaced it with an ASUS PRIME x470 PRO and experienced no further issues. 


Hi there,

I have just built a new system and have run into issues with my NVMe SSD. The first time I booted up the PC and installed the operating system there was no issue. Installation went fine and the PC booted up normally afterwards. However, when I turned off the PC and later turned it back on, the drive was no longer recognised and the PC went straight to the bios. In the bios, no drives were listed.

Apologies if this post is a bit too long, but there are a lot of things that I have already tried, so I believe it would be good to include these and my findings.

 

What I have tried so far:

• I have updated the bios to the latest version when I first spotted the issue. This is version 7B89v23 released on 2019-09-18 from the MSI website. Issue is present with both the old and new bios.
• I have tried both M2 sockets on the motherboard.
• I have tried connecting multiple drives (SATA), including a drive with a previous installation of Windows. The PC boots without issue from the other drive if the M2 drive is not detected. The M2 drive takes priority if detected. The issue is limited to M2 sockets.
• I have tried both the UEFI and CMS setting on the motherboard, but this does not seem to make a difference.
• I have tried creating another USB to install Windows and did a complete reinstallation (formatting the drive and removing all partitions). For this installation, I first ensured that the bios was set to UEFI, since someone else advised me that the issue may be related to this setting. I used these instructions (https://www.windowscentral.com/how-create-windows-10-usb-bootable-media-uefi-support) to create the boot drive using Rufus. For the first installation I had used Microsoft's own Media Creation Tool.
• I have looked if there are any drivers required, but Kingston denies this in their FAQ (https://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/ssd-faq).
• I have replaced the MB battery with a fresh battery.
• Upon recommendation by MSI, I have tried disconnecting the 24 pin power connector and taking out the MB battery for more than five minutes. Afterwards, I booted up and entered the BIOS, then pressed F6 to load optimized defaults and F10 to save and reset. 

None of the above solved the issue.
 

Some things that I found out through testing:

• Resetting the bios by removing the battery will cause the system to boot again from the correct drive.
• If I reset the PC using the reset button the bios will not forget the drive and will boot back up as expected. It is only after shutting down the system fully that the drive stops being detected.
• Strangely, if I plug in, plug out, or even plug in and plug out another drive in SATA slot 1 or 2 while the PC is turned off, the PC will boot from the M2 drive on the next startup. However, after shutting down and booting back up the drive will once again be undetected.

 

Lastly, here are the specs of my machine:

• Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
• MSI B450M Mortar Max (bios version 7B89v23  (latest))
• Ryzen 3600
• G.Skill Ripjaws V F4-3200C16D-16GVKB
• Gigabyte GTX 1070 Ti 8GB Aorus
• Kingston A2000 1TB
• Corsair TX550M V2

 

I am not sure what else there is left for me to try. I have a ticket with MSI, but response times are quite slow. I would greatly appreciate any input on things that I can still try.

Thank you.

[Palden]

Sounds to me like there could be a couple of things. First off, replace your cmos battery and see if that fixes it. Also double check your mobo manual and see which SATA ports you are supposed to use if you have 2 M.2s slotted. A lot of the time certain SATA ports are linked to the M.2 ports and MSI might have the M.2 port disabled if it picks up a sata device?

[PeterNL]

1 minute ago, Palden said:

Sounds to me like there could be a couple of things. First off, replace your cmos battery and see if that fixes it. Also double check your mobo manual and see which SATA ports you are supposed to use if you have 2 M.2s slotted. A lot of the time certain SATA ports are linked to the M.2 ports and MSI might have the M.2 port disabled if it picks up a sata device?

Thanks for your response.

I've already replaced the battery, but that did not help unfortunately.}

There is nothing in the manual about the M2 ports disabling or enabling any of the SATA ports or vice versa. The only thing is that the M2 2 slot disables the 2nd PCIe x4 slot, but that is not being used. I don't believe the SATA ports are the cause. The issue happens with all of them empty all the same. It also happens with 3 out of 4 slots filled in any configuration that I could really think of.

[Palden]

Yeah, something like that generally means the BIOS isn't holding it's memory. Your best bet would be to probably RMA the board for BIOS issues.

[PeterNL]

29 minutes ago, Palden said:

Yeah, something like that generally means the BIOS isn't holding it's memory. Your best bet would be to probably RMA the board for BIOS issues.

Yeah, I'm starting to think an RMA will probably end up being the conclusion, but as long as people keep offering things to try I can still hope to fix it. I have contacted MSI, but support isn't all that quick to respond.