m.2 suddenly not working

Matt K · January 4, 2021

so I have had a very weird experience just now. I went to update Overwatch, just to have it tell me that I cannot update it because I'm not logged in as administrator. this has never happened before. so I figured shutting down and restarting would fix the issue, just to have my pc boot abnormally (splash screen showing up on multiple monitors, overall much slower boot, getting stuck at splash screen, etc.) I had to do a hard shut down with the power button a couple times, also used the reset button to try to fix it. Upon successful boot, my m.2 is no longer detected. I have tried resetting my bios and nothing changed. Also one other weird thing that happened, the lights on my AIO reset to red, which never happens between power cycles, so not sure what caused that either. The m.2 is a 500gb 970 evo. Also, though my computer is booting now, it is booting at 1/4 the speed it used to. (obviously the m.2 is not my boot drive) so i'm confused as to why it is booting abnormally, as well as the drive not being detected. If anyone has any thoughts on possible remedies I would greatly appreciate it. oh, also Overwatch was installed on the m.2. so i have suspicions something was wrong when it gave me the administrator prompt.

Update: I removed the m.2, and booted. The boot process returned to normal, no splash screen issues and it booted at the proper speed. I then powered down, reseated the m.2, and all the issues came back, slow splash screen, slow windows loading screen, and drive is still not detected. so my m.2 is the culprit behind the start up issues, on top of not being detected.

Bombastinator · January 4, 2021

40 minutes ago, Matt K said:

so I have had a very weird experience just now. I went to update Overwatch, just to have it tell me that I cannot update it because I'm not logged in as administrator. this has never happened before. so I figured shutting down and restarting would fix the issue, just to have my pc boot abnormally (splash screen showing up on multiple monitors, overall much slower boot, getting stuck at splash screen, etc.) I had to do a hard shut down with the power button a couple times, also used the reset button to try to fix it. Upon successful boot, my m.2 is no longer detected. I have tried resetting my bios and nothing changed. Also one other weird thing that happened, the lights on my AIO reset to red, which never happens between power cycles, so not sure what caused that either. The m.2 is a 500gb 970 evo. Also, though my computer is booting now, it is booting at 1/4 the speed it used to. (obviously the m.2 is not my boot drive) so i'm confused as to why it is booting abnormally, as well as the drive not being detected. If anyone has any thoughts on possible remedies I would greatly appreciate it. oh, also Overwatch was installed on the m.2. so i have suspicions something was wrong when it gave me the administrator prompt.

Sounds like the gordian knot cleaving solution would be to simply log in as admin and do the change. There may be issues with actually doing that of course.

Matt K · January 4, 2021

27 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Sounds like the gordian knot cleaving solution would be to simply log in as admin and do the change. There may be issues with actually doing that of course.

no, i have administrator turned on for this user. that's the point. for some reason the m.2 was telling me I wasnt an administrator, and then it failed.

Bombastinator · January 5, 2021

1 hour ago, Matt K said:

no, i have administrator turned on for this user. that's the point. for some reason the m.2 was telling me I wasnt an administrator, and then it failed.

Ah. Yeah. Win10 has some obnoxiousnesses about making admin accounts. Not sure how it works.