Samsung 950 Pro - Boot Problems, Help Please

[xeromynd]

Having really weird boot problems with my new Samsung 950 Evo.

 

The story, and what I've tried so far:

-I had 4 Drives - 1x 840 Evo (Windows 8.1), 3x WD Blacks for Storage

-Go out and buy Samsung 950 Pro, install it, load windows on it, load all drivers, windows updates, update to latest BIOS, boots fine, all is well.

-Load all programs and transfer all files (All drives are still connected at this point, both bootable Windows 8.1 Drives [Old 840, and new 950])

---->(One thing to note here, Windows Update, despite me installing all motherboard drivers, kept asking me to install "ASUS AMDA00 Interface Driver," but I did not, as I have no idea what this is. I don't know if this is related, but I figured I'd provide this info)

 

Everything seems fine at this point, all good.

 

-UNPLUG my 840 Evo, because I don't need it in there anymore..

-Turn on PC. No Boot Devices detected, at all. Options to select boot order and priority in BIOS are greyed out. Wtf...

-Load Default Settings on my Motherboard (X99-Pro), now I can at least access my Boot Priority. The 950 IS detected there, set it to #1 priority.

-Attempt to boot to 950. Nothing happens, I just get taken back to the BIOS.....Great.

 

Have the crazy idea that I should plug my 840 Evo back in, because hey, it was working when I had it in there.

-Plug 840 Evo back in.

-Now I get BSOD, can't boot to the 950 OR the 840. Error Codes 0xc000000f and 0xc0000225.

 

Absolutely stumped here. No idea what is going on. I have all my data backed up, so that isn't a problem, I'm just massively frustrated at this point.

---->(Another thing to note, my boot to the old 840 Evo was selecting "Windows Boot Manager: Samsung 840 Evo", but when I installed Windows 8.1 on my 950, there was never an option that said "Windows Boot Manager", just "Samsung 950 Pro" should this be a concern?)

 

Pls help. Anyone have any ideas here? Did I do something wrong. Should I have installed Windows with only my 950 Plugged in? If I reinstall everything, will this happen AGAIN?

 

----> I have tried startup repair, it did not help.

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**UPDATE**   SO, I think I've discovered something. Up to this point, I think the only success I've had in booting since installing my 950 Pro was because I was booting to "Windows Boot Manager (P7: Samsung SSD EVO 120GB)." This is what I've been booting to for the last two years since building my PC, it's the only thing that has worked.

 

 Booting to this would lead me to a Windows screen asking me to select an OS to boot to. The two listed were A.) Win 8.1 on my 840 EVO and B.) Win 8.1 on my 950 Pro. When I choose either of these from THIS screen, they BOTH booted successfully (tested just now) When I unplugged the 840 Evo, this option went away, hence why I wasn't able to boot successfully, as this was the only option working for me.  This doesn't tell me why I'm having problems, but I have narrowed it down a bit.

 

Here are my boot options, the first one is the ONLY one that works now, or has ever worked for me.

 

[DXMember]

your MBR is lost somewhere and the NTFS table is probably messed up

run a windows automatic recovery from a bootable USB with windows ISO

[imreloadin]

4 minutes ago, xeromynd said:

Having really weird boot problems with my new Samsung 950 Evo.

 

Short version

-Have 4 Drives - 1x 840 Evo (Windows 8.1), 3x WD Blacks for Storage

-Go out and buy Samsung 950 Pro, install it, load windows on it, load all drivers, windows updates, update to latest BIOS, boots fine, all is well.

-Load all programs and transfer all files (All drives are still connected at this point, both bootable Windows 8.1 Drives [Old 840, and new 950])

---->(One thing to note here, Windows Update, despite me installing all motherboard drivers, kept asking me to install "ASUS AMDA00 Interface Driver," but I did not, as I have no idea what this is. I don't know if this is related, but I figured I'd provide this info)

 

 

Everything seems fine at this point, all good.

 

-UNPLUG my 840 Evo, because I don't need it in there anymore..

-Turn on PC. No Boot Devices detected, at all. Options to select boot order and priority in BIOS are greyed out. Wtf...

-Load Default Settings on my Motherboard (X99-Pro), now I can at least access my Boot Priority. The 950 IS detected there, set it to #1 priority.

-Attempt to boot to 950. Nothing happens, I just get taken back to the BIOS.....Great.

 

Have the crazy idea that I should plug my 840 Evo back in, because hey, it was working when I had it in there.

-Plug 840 Evo back in.

-Now I get BSOD, can't boot to the 950 OR the 840. Error Codes 0xc000000f and 0xc0000225.

 

I can choose the "Select Another Operating System" message from the BSOD, which gives me the options for both my 950 and 840. Again, the 950 still doesn't boot. The 840

 

Absolutely stumped here. No idea what is going on. I have all my data backed up, so that isn't a problem, I'm just massively frustrated at this point.

 

Pls help. Anyone have any ideas here? Did I do something wrong. Should I have installed Windows with only my 950 Plugged in? If I reinstall everything, will this happen AGAIN?

 

 

The AMDA Interface driver is a driver for the Asus AI Suite if I remember correctly so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

Doesn't the 950 use the new NVME drivers? If so have you updated to those? Also is this an m.2 drive, PCI-E, or just a SATA drive?

[xeromynd]

Just now, imreloadin said:

The AMDA Interface driver is a driver for the Asus AI Suite if I remember correctly so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

Doesn't the 950 use the new NVME drivers? If so have you updated to those? Also is this an m.2 drive, PCI-E, or just a SATA drive?

 

950 Pro, using M.2 slot. I did install the NVMe drivers from Samsung's Website, is that what you mean?

[xeromynd]

Updated original post with more info. Also did some research which might be the root of the problem, provided it's correct.

 

So Windows needs to make the "System Reserved" partition when installing, which apparently contains the "Windows Boot Manager." I've read a few posts saying that if you install Windows while having a drive plugged in that ALREADY HAS the system reserved partition on it, it WONT create a new one on the new drive you're installing to. Which would explain why I don't have the option to boot to "Windows Boot Manager" when my 840 Evo is unplugged.

 

Maybe I really do have to completely reinstall with nothing plugged in. Major f**king bummer dude.

Still need input though

[BrightCandle]

Unplug all the drives out but the 950, put the Windows disk/USB back in and repair the install. It will back a Windows boot manager on the primary drive to boot the 950 pro and then it will boot. Then you can plug the drives in and confirm the order is correct before trying to boot it.

[xeromynd]

3 hours ago, BrightCandle said:

Unplug all the drives out but the 950, put the Windows disk/USB back in and repair the install. It will back a Windows boot manager on the primary drive to boot the 950 pro and then it will boot. Then you can plug the drives in and confirm the order is correct before trying to boot it.

Will do so, thanks. Haven't gotten around to unplugging drives and testing all that stuff. Hope this works, reinstalling again would be a real bummer.

[Lehti]

Have you tried booting into a Windows recovery environment and typing the following commands

Bootrec /scanos

Bootrec /fixmbr

Bootrec /fixboot

Bootrec /rebuildbcd

[xeromynd]

13 hours ago, Lehti said:

Have you tried booting into a Windows recovery environment and typing the following commands

Bootrec /scanos

Bootrec /fixmbr

Bootrec /fixboot

Bootrec /rebuildbcd

I have not, can you elaborate on what these do? I assume this is done from CMD prompt once I'm booted to my installation USB?

[Lehti]

You're right. You need to boot from the installation USB and open the command prompt there. Bootrec will not work inside Windows itself.

It is a utility used to troubleshoot and fix problems with the master boot record or GUID partition table. You can find more in-depth information in the Windows knowledge base.

The /scanos flag is used to scan all the hard drives in your machine to look for Windows installations that are not present in the MBR/GPT.

/fixmbr writes a new mbr to your hard drive without overwriting your partition table

/fixboot writes a new boot sector compatible with Windows NT operating systems.

/rebuildbcd is similar to /scanos, but lets you select which operating systems you want to add to the boot manager.

I suspect that your issue is due to the fact that the MBR resided on the SATA SSD. By removing it, the computer doesn't know what OS to boot because it has no way of knowing if there is one installed.

[xeromynd]

So I'm gonna call this solved. Definitely was something to do with my old 840 Evo with OS still being plugged in during install. Unfortunatly, I did have to reinstall my OS (unplugging all drives first), but it was worth it. Everything boots just fine now.

[BrightCandle]

6 hours ago, xeromynd said:

So I'm gonna call this solved. Definitely was something to do with my old 840 Evo with OS still being plugged in during install. Unfortunatly, I did have to reinstall my OS (unplugging all drives first), but it was worth it. Everything boots just fine now.

You didn't need to reinstall the OS, as I said above I went through the same thing and simply had to do a repair with all drives removed. Glad it worked out.

[xeromynd]

6 hours ago, BrightCandle said:

You didn't need to reinstall the OS, as I said above I went through the same thing and simply had to do a repair with all drives removed. Glad it worked out.

Tried that, unfortunatly that didn't work, repair failed (can't remember the actual message), so I did have to reinstall.