Not detecting NVME (MSI A320M Pro-VH using an A320M-A Pro BIOS)

[JRMDEEz]

the motherboard that I bought is a brand new MSI A320M Pro-VH

that's what's displayed on the box

the Motherboard model number is MS-7C52 ver 1.2

 

The problem

at first, the motherboard is fine, I have been using it for 4 months, then when I bought an NVME drive and inserted it into the M.2 slot, it does not show in the bios and on the win10 and win11 boot media

I checked the drive If it's working, it is a Kingston NV2 1Tb, i have 2 of them

I plugged the NVME into a PCIE adapter and it shows on the other PC (i3 2nd gen), it shows in the win10 disk partition manager

 

troubleshooting

I tried cleaning the port... -nothing, tried the other drive... -nothing, tried updating the bios... -what! not compatible??

then I tried to update the BIOS version in the M-Flash, after some trouble (NTFS flash drive, does not accept FAT32 because file not detected), I managed to select a BIOS file, but I'm greeted with

"the bios you selected is not for this MB"

I checked the current BIOS version and it shows as E7C51AMS.171, which DOES NOT EXIST in the Pro-VH version

if you parse the current version it will be "E7C51AMS.171" -> "7C51v171" which you can find on the A320M-A PRO BIOS list

why its a problem:

the A320M-A PRO does not have an NVME slot compared to mine MSI A320M Pro-VH, I have a hunch that the M-A version of the BIOS is messing up because the firmware does not know that the M.2 slot exists

 

Note:

- if you tried to flash the bios with "E7C51AMS.171", it will work (as if the motherboard was a A320M-A PRO)

- I am plugging the drive into the motherboard's M.2 slot, the adapter is just for troubleshooting because i just borrowed the adapter

- there's a discrepancy between the System Product Name and Board Product Name as you can see bellow

fallback image: https://i.imgur.com/A6gbBl4.png

Questions:

- can I force the bios to flash the unsupported BIOS (A320M PRO-VH)?

i have a CH341 BIOS programmer here (I have this to flash FM2 Boards before) not an option as this would fry the BIOS (3v programmer on a 1.8v chip)

- did the shop/manufacturer updated to the wrong BIOS?
Specs:
CPU: Ryzen 5 4500
Motherboard: Msi A320M Pro-VH
Ram: Teamgroup Elite+ 3200Mhz
GPU: GTX 1060 6Gb

this is my first time posting to this forum, if you have any questions, feel free to ask 

[Robchil]

Welcome to the forum. 

 

since you have a bios programer. i would have tried to load the "correct" bios already.. what are you waiting for?

worst case.. you just reload the old one if it don't work. 

 

[JRMDEEz]

On 5/20/2023 at 9:48 PM, Robchil said:

Welcome to the forum. 

 

since you have a bios programer. i would have tried to load the "correct" bios already.. what are you waiting for?

worst case.. you just reload the old one if it don't work. 

 

ok, I have now tried this option, but before I started, I checked where the BIOS chip is located and searched the model number, and it's a Winbond W25Q128FW. I checked its specs and its runs at 1.6-1.8 volts, my BIOS programmer is at 3v so this cant flash the chip or this would fry the thing.

[Robchil]

21 minutes ago, JRMDEEz said:

ok, I have now tried this option, but before I started, I checked where the BIOS chip is located and searched the model number, and it's a Winbond W25Q128FW. I checked its specs and its runs at 1.6-1.8 volts, my BIOS programmer is at 3v so this cant flash the chip or this would fry the thing.

so you need a converter socket..  like in this video. 

it does look a bit jank.. but it works

 

[JRMDEEz]

Thanks for the help but i have found a better and straightforward solution

 

After quite some tinkering, i managed to fix the issue

 

My theory was correct that the shop/manuf. managed to flash the BIOS from another model

 

I resolved it by flashing the A320M Pro-VH BIOS using UEFI Shell flashing tool from MSI forum to bypass that error message

 

After that, it detected the NVME drive