BIOS boot order issue

[bringmepeterpan]

Hey guys, I'm having an issue with my PC and boot order on my motherboard. The motherboard is an MSI Tomahawk Z390 (with an i5-9600k), I use a WD blue 500gb M.2 as my main/boot drive as well as a a few other SSDs. The issue I am having is that I cannot select the M.2 as the first priority boot option, and the only drive that shows up is a Crucial MX 500gb that I had my OS on before I upgraded from a 1600x to the i5-9600k. The Crucial SSD was wiped but still has the windows OS partitions from when the OS was on it, and if I try unplugging it I can no longer use the PC as it won't boot into the M.2 even though it that still plugged it. And when the SSD is plugged in it doesn't actually boot into it, it will boot into the M.2 just fine. The bios is up to date but I just can't figure out why the M.2 won't show up in the BIOS and let me select it as a boot option or why it wont boot into that drive without the SSD plugged in. 

 

Anyone have experience with a similar issue or know why this is happening? Any ideas would be helpful and I appreciate everyone's time! Cheers. 

[SzaboAttila]

2 minutes ago, bringmepeterpan said:

Hey guys, I'm having an issue with my PC and boot order on my motherboard. The motherboard is an MSI Tomahawk Z390 (with an i5-9600k), I use a WD blue 500gb M.2 as my main/boot drive as well as a a few other SSDs. The issue I am having is that I cannot select the M.2 as the first priority boot option, and the only drive that shows up is a Crucial MX 500gb that I had my OS on before I upgraded from a 1600x to the i5-9600k. The Crucial SSD was wiped but still has the windows OS partitions from when the OS was on it, and if I try unplugging it I can no longer use the PC as it won't boot into the M.2 even though it that still plugged it. And when the SSD is plugged in it doesn't actually boot into it, it will boot into the M.2 just fine. The bios is up to date but I just can't figure out why the M.2 won't show up in the BIOS and let me select it as a boot option or why it wont boot into that drive without the SSD plugged in. 

 

Anyone have experience with a similar issue or know why this is happening? Any ideas would be helpful and I appreciate everyone's time! Cheers. 

Do you have Windows on the m.2 installed?

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just to make sure I have this correct:

• The Crucial SSD has Windows on it still
• The WD SSD is the one you want to use
• If you unplug the Crucial SSD, the system won't boot using the WD SSD
• If you plug in the Crucial SSD, the system can boot using the WD SSD

If all of this is true, to me this sounds like the bootloader is on the Crucial SSD. If this was plugged in while you installed Windows on the WD SSD, it may have written the boot entry to the Crucial SSD and set the WD SSD as the default OS to boot into so it won't ask you which OS to boot.

 

(though I'm not sure what you mean by "wiped" if the Crucial SSD still has stuff on it)

[Eastman51]

So, if the Crucial still has Windows partitions on it, its not wiped. What you need to do is go into diskpart and select the crucial and run the "clean" command (make sure you backup any data on the drive first). That command tells the drive that it no longer has any partitions or data on it (clearing any MBR or GPT from previous Windows installations). 

 

Once you do this, you may have to reinstall Windows on the WD, to make sure that Windows writes a MBR/GPT to the WD rather than the Crucial.

[Crunchy Dragon]

20 minutes ago, Eastman51 said:

So, if the Crucial still has Windows partitions on it, its not wiped. What you need to do is go into diskpart and select the crucial and run the "clean" command (make sure you backup any data on the drive first). That command tells the drive that it no longer has any partitions or data on it (clearing any MBR or GPT from previous Windows installations).

If the OP has a Windows 10 install disk, then they can use that to format the drive, and then install Windows on whichever drive they want.

[Crunchy Dragon]

-Moved to Storage Devices-

[Mira Yurizaki]

I should probably provide a solution.

 

To ensure you want to boot on the drive you install Windows on, make sure it's the only drive connected to the PC when installing Windows.