Ssd not able to boot.

[Jinhwho]

Hi everyone, so I’ve been using windows 11 with no problems for the past year, yesterday the pc gone to sleep mode, and when today I wanted to power it on, surprise, SSD is no more able to boot, the pc automatically switches to my old installation of win10 on an old secondary HDD, the things is when booted on windows I can see the ssd under the device manager but I cannot access it, I also can see it in my bios devices but even if I put it higher on the boot list it won’t boot, also most of my boot list is marked with U as in UEFI mode expect my primary SSD, thanks in advance for any help.

[Kon-Tiki]

3 hours ago, Jinhwho said:

I can see the ssd under the device manager but I cannot access it

What do you specifically mean with being unable to access it? Did you try accessing it in file Explorer? If so, what prevents you from accessing it? Does it not show up under "This PC" or do you get an error if you try to access it?

 

What you could try is to unplug your HDD, the SATA data cable (smaller of the two connectors on your drive) is enough. This will only leave the SSD as a bootable device in your system and should therefore circumvent any problems with boot order. Make sure you don't have any other storage devices plugged in, such as USB sticks or external drives.

 

Good luck

[Jinhwho]

22 minutes ago, Kon-Tiki said:

What do you specifically mean with being unable to access it? Did you try accessing it in file Explorer? If so, what prevents you from accessing it? Does it not show up under "This PC" or do you get an error if you try to access it?

 

What you could try is to unplug your HDD, the SATA data cable (smaller of the two connectors on your drive) is enough. This will only leave the SSD as a bootable device in your system and should therefore circumvent any problems with boot order. Make sure you don't have any other storage devices plugged in, such as USB sticks or external drives.

 

Good luck

I can’t see it under my pc as a drive, yet when I enter the device manager I can see it listed and working correctly, I tried unplugging the HDD and booting up from the ssd but it didn’t work even if it’s there in the top priority spot in the bios, (but doesn’t seem to be listed as a uefi device like the others ?)

[Kon-Tiki]

14 minutes ago, Jinhwho said:

even if it’s there in the top priority spot in the bios

In the image you sent the SSD is in a low spot for boot priority. The highest priority is to the left. See https://www.msi.com/support/technical_details/MB_Boot_Priority As for it not showing as a UEFI device in this list it should not prevent a successful boot. Since you can't access the drive from explorer, I believe there is another issue to fix first.

 

Regardless, if you don't have any other bootable device in your system it shouldn't matter what the boot priority is since eventually it will end up at your SSD in any case. But it can't hurt to move it up to first priority, sometimes these little things become important later on.

 

You might be able to find more information on Disk Management. It is odd that the drive shows up in device manager yet not in file explorer. To open Disk Management, right-click Start and select Disk Management.

[Jinhwho]

5 minutes ago, Kon-Tiki said:

In the image you sent the SSD is in a low spot for boot priority. The highest priority is to the left. See https://www.msi.com/support/technical_details/MB_Boot_Priority As for it not showing as a UEFI device in this list it should not prevent a successful boot. Since you can't access the drive from explorer, I believe there is another issue to fix first.

 

Regardless, if you don't have any other bootable device in your system it shouldn't matter what the boot priority is since eventually it will end up at your SSD in any case. But it can't hurt to move it up to first priority, sometimes these little things become important later on.

 

You might be able to find more information on Disk Management. It is odd that the drive shows up in device manager yet not in file explorer. To open Disk Management, right-click Start and select Disk Management.

Thanks for the very fast replies, excuse my lack of explanation as I just woke up lol, so the screenshot was before I put the ssd on top priority to the extreme left, also as stated even when I remove my secondary hdd, the pc fails to boot as if the mbr is corrupted or something?

ive also tried disk management and I can’t see it there, only my two hdd partitions are visible, even though, as said before, I can see the ssd in the hardware tab list when right clicking my hdd and in the device manager.

[Kon-Tiki]

Can you send an image of what you see when opening Disk Management please?

[Jinhwho]

3 hours ago, Kon-Tiki said:

Can you send an image of what you see when opening Disk Management please?

Here is a screenshot 

[Jinhwho]

New informations, since this began to happen, the pc always takes long to boot with the msi VGA led always on like after 5 6 minutes, when I unplugged the ssd it didn’t happen the vga test led was just on for 6 7 secondes max and the pc booted faster

[Kon-Tiki]

Alright, I didn't see what I was hoping for. This is indeed strange. That the drive shows up in device manager but not in Disk Management is very odd since all drives connected to your computer, regardless of whether Windows can open them in file explorer or not should show up in Disk Management.

 

Two more things you could try as a sanity check:

1. Connect the SSD to the SATA cable you currently use for your HDD.
2. Clear the CMOS. This step I mention since you brought up the issue with the VGA POST indicator on your mainboard.

 

If the above fails I would buy a SATA to USB adapter and check if you can access the drive that way. If so you at least know your drive is still working and the problem is somewhere else. If this gives you access to your drive I would then also use the opportunity to back up any important data.

[Jinhwho]

14 minutes ago, Kon-Tiki said:

Alright, I didn't see what I was hoping for. This is indeed strange. That the drive shows up in device manager but not in Disk Management is very odd since all drives connected to your computer, regardless of whether Windows can open them in file explorer or not should show up in Disk Management.

 

Two more things you could try as a sanity check:

1. Connect the SSD to the SATA cable you currently use for your HDD.
2. Clear the CMOS. This step I mention since you brought up the issue with the VGA POST indicator on your mainboard.

 

If the above fails I would buy a SATA to USB adapter and check if you can access the drive that way. If so you at least know your drive is still working and the problem is somewhere else. If this gives you access to your drive I would then also use the opportunity to back up any important data.

Ok I just removed the battery, should I also short the pins ? Thing is I don’t have pins on my MSI mortar b450 motherboard, I’ve got a jbat1 though but it doesn’t look like pins.

[Kon-Tiki]

From the manual for your mainboard (https://download-2.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7B89v1.4-GSE-LITE.pdf) JBAT1 is the jumper to short (5 to 10 seconds) to clear the CMOS. Also disconnect your PSU from mains power when you do this and push the power button to discharge any cpacitor in the PSU (never know if that's actually necessary but it doesn't hurt and is quick).

 

I take it that switching SATA cables did not solve the problem then?

[Jinhwho]

25 minutes ago, Kon-Tiki said:

From the manual for your mainboard (https://download-2.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7B89v1.4-GSE-LITE.pdf) JBAT1 is the jumper to short (5 to 10 seconds) to clear the CMOS. Also disconnect your PSU from mains power when you do this and push the power button to discharge any cpacitor in the PSU (never know if that's actually necessary but it doesn't hurt and is quick).

 

I take it that switching SATA cables did not solve the problem then?

Yes switching cables didn’t solve the problems, I just remounted the battery and the bios defaulted, still the same problem though, the bios confirms the ssd but it takes super long to boot with msi vga led on all the time for like 5 minutes to take me to the final msi arsenal screenshot. (If I leave it just restarts) 

[Kon-Tiki]

This is odd. The VGA LED would typically indicate an issue with the graphics but this doesn't seem to be connected to your SSD to me. I am out of ideas for now unfortunately. The only thing left to recommend at the moment is the SATA to USB adapter I mentioned to check if the SSD is at all working.

[Jinhwho]

Ok I’ll try it out, it’s odd indeed, just got the ssd showing as a device to boot from when I pressed f11 yet it doesn’t work, maybe the MBR or boot sector got corrupted because of the sleep/wake up in windows 11 ?

[Jinhwho]

A small update, I hooked the ssd to my pc using an external usb case and tried using easus partition master, still not showing in explorer though

[Jinhwho]

Update two, I managed to have it shown on disk management and it’s asking me to initialize it in either gpt or mbr ?

[Jinhwho]

Hi, any tips ?