bootdrive My motherboard has been struggling to detect my boot drive for the past couple of days . Now I'm in a slump on what to do and I really need your help.

[edge123]

Basically, my problem started about three days ago we booted up to a prompt saying that no boot drive was detected. We had a guy come over and all he did was reseat and clean the M.2 pins. And we were able to boot to windows.

 

Next day, the same thing happened. We struggled a little bit to figure out what was wrong this time, but it was still the same solution, CLEAN the M.2 pins. We only reseated it prior to that, but had no luck.

 

So right now, with some anxiety I powered my desktop on and was met with the same prompt.

 

To note/Some Questions:

-This doesn't seem to happen only everytime I shut it down and on again, only when off for what seems like long periods of time.

- My NVME (Patriot P300) which I've had for 9-10 months along with the desktop, according to CrystalDiskInfo is at 97% health.

- My motherboard is a Asrock B450m Steel Legend and I haven't updated (at least manually) the BIOS at all.

- My NVME's indicator light doesn't flash in the instances where it can't be detected, so it's possible that my motherboard wont send power to it?

- I just RMA'd my PSU (Seasonic Focus GM 550) a couple of weeks ago and am now starting to wonder if that could causing a power issue?

- Would a clean install of Windows 10 be of any help?

- Is it possible and safe for me to just put it on sleep mode forever?

- The guy we had come over suggested I just buy a SATA SSD (Not M.2 form factor), but I'm just not sure if it's an issue with the NVME...

 

So overall, I would really appreciate any sort of troubleshooting suggestions from this community as using this desktop daily without the hassle of having to clean the M.2 everyday is very valuable to me.

 

Thank you in advance!

 

 

 

 

[MrSimplicity]

The only thing I can think of is, do you have another hard drive in the system or only the M.2? If so and you installed Windows on the M.2 with the other hard drive in something could've messed up with the install (I've had this happen where it partially installs on the M.2 and another drive for some reason.) So if it comes down to it maybe unhook other drives and reinstall. Another thing you should try is find a way to clean out the inside of the M.2 connector on the motherboard, I can't think of a way to do that though off the top of my head. Also on your mobo there is a secondary M.2 slot on the bottom right you could try putting it into (if no issues there then that would indicate a mobo issue on the main M.2 slot). You could always see if you can get a M.2 pcie adapter, Idk how thick your GPU is or if your second PCIE is open but that may work as well.

 

All in all it sounds more like a mobo issue over your actual drive itself. 

[edge123]

4 minutes ago, MrSimplicity said:

The only thing I can think of is, do you have another hard drive in the system or only the M.2? If so and you installed Windows on the M.2 with the other hard drive in something could've messed up with the install (I've had this happen where it partially installs on the M.2 and another drive for some reason.) So if it comes down to it maybe unhook other drives and reinstall. Another thing you should try is find a way to clean out the inside of the M.2 connector on the motherboard, I can't think of a way to do that though off the top of my head. Also on your mobo there is a secondary M.2 slot on the bottom right you could try putting it into (if no issues there then that would indicate a mobo issue on the main M.2 slot). You could always see if you can get a M.2 pcie adapter, Idk how thick your GPU is or if your second PCIE is open but that may work as well.

 

All in all it sounds more like a mobo issue over your actual drive itself. 

Hello there, thank you for your suggestions!

Regarding your opinion on the possibility of a clunky install of Windows, is it possible that an issue would pertain even after months of use?

Also, I think my secondary slot is compatible with SATA only if I'm not mistaken.

Though hopefully, I can somehow make it work with your suggestions, thanks again for the input!

 

[MrSimplicity]

2 minutes ago, edge123 said:

Regarding your opinion on the possibility of a clunky install of Windows, is it possible that an issue would pertain even after months of use?

With this question I'm assuming that you do have a secondary drive installed? In this case it is possible that Windows has set both drives as boot. the way to actually check is to go into your second disk and see if there is a windows folder. If there is then Windows did exactly as it did to me. This could possibly also mean that the connection between your second drive and mobo may be going out. essentially in this case if either drive loses connection then it would show no boot. Yes, even if the issue is your M.2 slot then the other drive doesn't work either. It's really weird and really dumb that this could even happen. So yes it is very possible for this to become an issue months later even after working just fine.

[edge123]

2 hours ago, MrSimplicity said:

With this question I'm assuming that you do have a secondary drive installed? In this case it is possible that Windows has set both drives as boot. the way to actually check is to go into your second disk and see if there is a windows folder. If there is then Windows did exactly as it did to me. This could possibly also mean that the connection between your second drive and mobo may be going out. essentially in this case if either drive loses connection then it would show no boot. Yes, even if the issue is your M.2 slot then the other drive doesn't work either. It's really weird and really dumb that this could even happen. So yes it is very possible for this to become an issue months later even after working just fine.

Yes, I do have a Secondary drive, an HDD. So assuming that that is the issue, what could I do to possibly fix it? Just do a clean install of Windows?

[medievalcow]

11 hours ago, edge123 said:

Yes, I do have a Secondary drive, an HDD. So assuming that that is the issue, what could I do to possibly fix it? Just do a clean install of Windows?

I would do a clean install of Windows, but disconnect your second hard drive before you start the process.

 

Edit: Just re-read the part about the power supply RMA. it's possible that the old PSU could have messed something up with a power spike... I'd still try the fresh install of Windows on the NVME with the second hard drive disconnected. 

 

Good luck!

[MrSimplicity]

15 hours ago, edge123 said:

Yes, I do have a Secondary drive, an HDD. So assuming that that is the issue, what could I do to possibly fix it? Just do a clean install of Windows?

Exactly what @medievalcowsaid. Just disconnect all drives other than your NVMe and reinstall windows.