BIOS not seeing Windows 11 install in UEFI?

RykerLTT · August 5, 2022

Why is my motherboard unable to detect/boot into the new SSD which has Windows 11 (confirmed to boot successfully from my other PC)?

Things to keep in mind:

Motherboard is already set to UEFI
SSD is on GPT (Obv, Windows 11 requires it)
Other PC boots fine with this drive's Windows installation
Working PC has Gigabyte Z490 UD motherboard
PC unable to detect SSD has MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Edge motherboard on latest BIOS
If you need more info, please ask!

What happened up to this point:

I guess I'll lead with where it all began: putting Windows 11 on my PC. Currently the system was running a Windows 10 with MBR on the main SSD (970 Evo 500GB NVMe), set in CSM (Legacy) mode, had an outdated BIOS which didn't support Windows 11, etc. I had my work cut out for me, but all those obstacles had straightforward solutions. For this new install, I decided on using the secondary SSD which was used for game storage (WD Black 1TB NVMe) since I was fine with converting it to GPT and formatting everything on there. The SSD with Windows 10 on it was taken out of the PC and is not relevant. I updated the BIOS, changed the necessary settings to UEFI, had a Windows 11 installation USB ready. What could go wrong?

Well after about 6–7 hours of being on the Windows 11 installation attempts fumbling around in diskpart and the bios settings—and even moving the SSD to a different PC (which had a WD Blue 1TB SSD already running Windows 11)—I came to the the conclusion that the drive was faulty, which by the way I still think I'm right about. I got about every error possible when getting to the final screen of drive selection on the Windows installation process. A few times it even worked, but none were detected by the bios on my PC.

^ Keep in mind this drive (WD Black 1TB) was unable to boot into Windows 11 on multiple PCs after a successful installation from USB, which was not the case when I bought a new SSD as you will see below

Yesterday I came home with a new SSD (Samsung 970 Evo 1TB) ready to see everything work perfectly. I was almost right. I was able to successfully install Windows 11 first try; however, the bios still didn't detect it. I ran the SSD up to the other PC and this time it boots into Windows 11 easily. New OS install works fine on other PC. Why? Both motherboards are set to UEFI, have fast boot off (not that I haven't tried tweaking most settings like secure boot or fast boot off/on one by one to see if anything would magically boot). Still stuck here.