HP Laptop won't POST with a 1TB SATA SSD attached

[naturalnonsense]

First time ever posting anything on a tech forum, so this issue really is a challenging one...

 

I bought a SATA Samsung 1TB 860 QVO SSD to put into my HP Pavilion 15-cs2008nw laptop, as a secondary drive. The machine does not POST with it attached to the motherboard.

OS: Windows 10 Home x64 0.0.18363 Build 18363

 

This laptop came pre-installed with a 256GB M.2 NVMe Toshiba SSD, however, in other configurations, 15-cs laptops come with 2.5" HDDs, so there was space for it in my machine too.

 

With the SATA SSD attached, the screen just shows a black screen, with the Caps Lock indicator showing 5 longs and 4 short blinks. According to HP's support website, it means that "The embedded controller times out waiting for the BIOS to return from system board initialization (end of POST)."

 

After two days of trying to fix the issue, I found out the following:

 - It did POST with a 128GB NTFS-formatted Kingston SSD attached to the same SATA port

 - It boots up with the 1TB SSD attached after disconnecting it from the mobo, setting the SATA controller mode to AHCI, instead of "Intel RST Premium with Optane", reconnecting the SATA SSD back, and it even boots into Windows (from the NVMe drive) and can see the SATA drive just fine! And every time, it takes just one restart to make it not boot again. And every time, the SATA controller mode resets back to "Intel RST..."

 - After disconnecting both drives, booting the machine, then connecting only the SATA drive, it does POST, and not only once, and it also even does it with the "Intel RST..." mode.

- The 1TB SSD works just fine in a desktop computer I have, and I NTFS-formatted it.

- The issue is not the SATA-mobo ribbon cable, I tried two of them.

 

Thanks a lot in advance for your help

[Kanna]

This isn't really a reason I think it is but maybe the drive is too big. Welcome to the forums

[naturalnonsense]

Just now, Kanna said:

This isn't really a reason I think it is but maybe the drive is too big. Welcome to the forums

Also thought about it, and assumed it might be a power issue, because of its capacity, but 15-cs often come with 1TB HDDs, so I highly doubt it. Thanks anyway

[SpaceGhostC2C]

It is very strange, but you managed to narrow it down to a firmware issue. You have confirmed that the drive itself works, that it works with your laptop (if the only drive), and that your laptop works with multiple drives. You've also made it work with a different SATA mode, although it doesn't stick. Hence, my only guess is that the problem happens at the BIOS, which for some reason is auto-detecting which drive configuration to use based on what it sees plugged at startup, which maaaaybe it's related to the way Optane+HDD is meant to work, except you are not using either, just two independent drives.

The strange thing is that changing SATA modes, at least in other contexts (AHCI vs RAID), usually renders your machine unbootable unless you reinstall the OS using the new mode. But here you seem to make it work, it just reverts.

 

In the end, all I can think of is wither trying to make the SATA setting stick (digging around in the BIOS when it posts) or trying to find anything that could be different between your 128GB and your 1TB drives, since one is accepted and the other isn't. 

[naturalnonsense]

8 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

It is very strange, but you managed to narrow it down to a firmware issue. You have confirmed that the drive itself works, that it works with your laptop (if the only drive), and that your laptop works with multiple drives. You've also made it work with a different SATA mode, although it doesn't stick. Hence, my only guess is that the problem happens at the BIOS, which for some reason is auto-detecting which drive configuration to use based on what it sees plugged at startup, which maaaaybe it's related to the way Optane+HDD is meant to work, except you are not using either, just two independent drives.

The strange thing is that changing SATA modes, at least in other contexts (AHCI vs RAID), usually renders your machine unbootable unless you reinstall the OS using the new mode. But here you seem to make it work, it just reverts.

 

In the end, all I can think of is wither trying to make the SATA setting stick (digging around in the BIOS when it posts) or trying to find anything that could be different between your 128GB and your 1TB drives, since one is accepted and the other isn't. 

I will try to connect them both and see how they are recognised by BIOS. Maybe reinstalling the OS can help...

[naturalnonsense]

Well, I fixed it. Created a recovery drive, had to wipe all of my data and reinstall windows. Magically, it worked, and now the laptop is usable with both drives installed. Windows was doing something with the BIOS, not allowing the laptop to boot.

 

sometimes i really want to switch to linux haha