2011 MOBO Wont Boot From SSD?

[TallTechGuy125]

Hi all,

 

So here is the scoop.  My buddy has a old cyberpower PC he got from a friend for free.  It as a 980ti, a MSI 760gma-p34 motherboard, 1TB HDD, running windows 10.  And the thing is dreadfully slow.  I looked it over and noticed that the hard drive usage was near 100% all the time.  Knowing this is a sign of the drive being old/going bad and all the crap on the PC using up and hard drive bandwidth I suggested (being the techie of the friend group)  to go grab a WD blue SSD in any size he wanted and I would put a fresh windows install on it to help boost the performance of his PC.

 

Well the drive came in today and I did exactly that.  Pulled the old HDD out, put the new 2TB SSD in, and installed windows.  When windows restarted (after initial setup on the purple screen) to then go boot from the drive instead of the USB stick, all we got was a black screen and a blinking cursor. 

 

Confused, I tried the install again, and again, checking bios settings for boot drives making sure the drive was being recognized (which it was) and trying again.  Finally I gave up, formatted the drive on my PC, installed windows to it fully to the point where i could get to the desktop (again on my separate PC).  Plugged the drive back in and again.... nothing.  One beep for post, the cyberpower logo, the drive initializing then nothing. I tried swapping cables, swapping sata ports, still nothing could fix it. I even tried plugging in the old HDD again to boot from and it started no problem.

 

I researched this for about 4 hours and still could not find a fix, what am I missing here? Is this old MOBO truly incompatible with a modern 2TB SSD to boot windows from? I did see some other people had this issue but it was due to cloning a drive instead of a fresh install. I am completely stumped on why this is happening. Hopefully someone on here can help, Id really hate if he couldn't use this SSD.

 

Any help appreciated! Thank you!

[Pickles von Brine]

Have you tried a SSD? I do know some systesm can be a little wonky but nothing like this. 

 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

I

24 minutes ago, TallTechGuy125 said:

I researched this for about 4 hours and still could not find a fix, what am I missing here? Is this old MOBO truly incompatible with a modern 2TB SSD to boot windows from?

I doubt it, you wouldn't even be able to install it there in the first place. But it could be incompatible with Windows 10.

Does the motherboard support UEFI? Does it have secure boot?

 

How did he get Windows 10 there in the first place, through a clean install or through an upgrade from an existing older Windows installation? That could be the issue: he successfully upgraded, but a fresh install won't work.

 

[TallTechGuy125]

2 minutes ago, Pickles - Lord of the Jar said:

Have you tried a SSD? I do know some systesm can be a little wonky but nothing like this. 

 

Yeah.  Thats what I did.  The system wont boot the the SSD but it boots fine to the HDD.  When I put the SSD in my PC and boot from it it boots no problem, when I put the SSD in his PC and try to boot from it it does not, just the black screen and flashing cursor. 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, TallTechGuy125 said:

Hi all,

 

So here is the scoop.  My buddy has a old cyberpower PC he got from a friend for free.  It as a 980ti, a MSI 760gma-p34 motherboard, 1TB HDD, running windows 10.  And the thing is dreadfully slow.  I looked it over and noticed that the hard drive usage was near 100% all the time.  Knowing this is a sign of the drive being old/going bad and all the crap on the PC using up and hard drive bandwidth I suggested (being the techie of the friend group)  to go grab a WD blue SSD in any size he wanted and I would put a fresh windows install on it to help boost the performance of his PC.

 

Well the drive came in today and I did exactly that.  Pulled the old HDD out, put the new 2TB SSD in, and installed windows.  When windows restarted (after initial setup on the purple screen) to then go boot from the drive instead of the USB stick, all we got was a black screen and a blinking cursor. 

 

Confused, I tried the install again, and again, checking bios settings for boot drives making sure the drive was being recognized (which it was) and trying again.  Finally I gave up, formatted the drive on my PC, installed windows to it fully to the point where i could get to the desktop (again on my separate PC).  Plugged the drive back in and again.... nothing.  One beep for post, the cyberpower logo, the drive initializing then nothing. I tried swapping cables, swapping sata ports, still nothing could fix it. I even tried plugging in the old HDD again to boot from and it started no problem.

 

I researched this for about 4 hours and still could not find a fix, what am I missing here? Is this old MOBO truly incompatible with a modern 2TB SSD to boot windows from? I did see some other people had this issue but it was due to cloning a drive instead of a fresh install. I am completely stumped on why this is happening. Hopefully someone on here can help, Id really hate if he couldn't use this SSD.

 

Any help appreciated! Thank you!

In the Sata configuration menu look for AHCI/IDE. Change it to the other from which it is currently on.

If that doesn't work, you may need to install the ASMedia Sata Driver. Generally W10 is pretty good about having most older drivers, but this could be the issue.

Can't think of anything else to try off my head that you probably haven't already tried.

[TallTechGuy125]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I

I doubt it, you wouldn't even be able to install it there in the first place. But it could be incompatible with Windows 10.

Does the motherboard support UEFI? Does it have secure boot?

 

How did he get Windows 10 there in the first place, through a clean install or through an upgrade from an existing older Windows installation? That could be the issue: he successfully upgraded, but a fresh install won't work.

 

My guess is though an upgrade.  The system shipped with 8.1 on it and my guess is someone along the way did the free upgrade.  Ill have to look into UEFI and secureboot.

[Pickles von Brine]

Those systems I don't think had that on them. Some of those systems around that time did and some didn't since it was so new. 

[TallTechGuy125]

7 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

In the Sata configuration menu look for AHCI/IDE. Change it to the other from which it is currently on.

If that doesn't work, you may need to install the ASMedia Sata Driver. Generally W10 is pretty good about having most older drivers, but this could be the issue.

Can't think of anything else to try off my head that you probably haven't already tried.

Does not look like the bios has a SATA configuration menu.  At least I cant find it.  Even Checked the motherboard manual. https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/support/760GM-P34-FX

 

As for the driver, would i install that driver onto windows itself on a PC where i can get the SSD to boot?

[TempestCatto]

Try installing whatever OS it came with (Win7 or Win8) then try the upgrade from there. AFIK you can still do that.

[TallTechGuy125]

54 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Try installing whatever OS it came with (Win7 or Win8) then try the upgrade from there. AFIK you can still do that.

I dont think that upgrade tool still works.  Do you think that cloning his current drive would work?

[TempestCatto]

10 hours ago, TallTechGuy125 said:

I dont think that upgrade tool still works.  Do you think that cloning his current drive would work?

It should still work: https://www.techradar.com/news/ahead-of-windows-7s-death-you-can-still-upgrade-to-windows-10-for-free-heres-how-to-get-it

 

Try the upgrade thing first, if that doesn't work, then you could use a cloning software.