Question What did I break?

[SabaII]

Hey everyone. It's been a while since I have posted up but I recently had an issue with my computer that I traced back to a bad mobo. Got the new one in and setup last night. Had it all hooked up on my awesome cardboard box test bench and it posted fine but did not see an OS on my m.2 drive. It seemed to read the drive just fine. Not a huge deal to me since I back everything up so when I get home I am just going to reformat and reinstall but what is picking at me is the fact that I'm not sure exactly what went wrong? I am curious as to what may have failed with the mobo that caused the drive to fail or could something have failed in the drive that caused an issue with the mobo? Appreciate the help.

PC Specs
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
Old Mobo - MSI B350 Gaming Plus
New Mobo - Gigabyte B450 Aorus M
M.2 Corsair MP300 240gb
16GB Corsair Vengeance 3200
RX580 8GB

 

[Furious_Styles]

Hard to know what went wrong unless you test the m.2 drive on a new mobo and make sure it's 100% working. Did you know what was wrong with the old board?

 

[EXCellR8]

Is this a SATA m.2 or NVMe?

 

[SabaII]

Hard to know what went wrong unless you test the m.2 drive on a new mobo and make sure it's 100% working. Did you know what was wrong with the old board?

Not 100% sure what went wrong. Wouldn't post last week and tried clearing CMOS, checking all connections and even trying a different known good psu. It was either the mobo or cpu so I rolled the dice haha. Figured if it was the cpu I would have needed a new mobo to upgrade to current gen ryzen anyhow.

Is this a SATA m.2 or NVMe?

NVMe

 

[EXCellR8]

Are you getting the "valid boot drive not found" or similar message after POST?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Try disabling CSM Mode under Boot Mode.

 

[SabaII]

Are you getting the "valid boot drive not found" or similar message after POST?

So after I swapped everything over I went straight into bios to check that everything was registering and it was. I exited bios and when it restarted it shot me right back into the bios menu. I restarted and went into the boot menu. The drive registered and I selected the correct drive but it then went into this weird boot loop where it kept loading right back up into the boot menu. So then I put a USB drive in that I thought had Windows 10 on it and it was at that point it gave me the message there was no valid boot drive found. I hung it up for the night after that.

Try disabling CSM Mode under Boot Mode.

I will give this a go when I get home tonight.

 

[EXCellR8]

The M.2 drive is in the list of your current boot devices though, right? You were using EFI with the old board right?

 

[SabaII]

The M.2 drive is in the list of your current boot devices though, right? You were using EFI with the old board right?

Yes it is, it was the only drive I had hooked up since I was just doing a first fire of the system. And yes I was with the old board as well. The issue I had with the old board was it wouldn't even post and the EZdebug led for the CPU would stay lit. As per MSI it was either an issue with my CPU or the board itself, that was after I verified I had good power to the mobo.

 

[EXCellR8]

Well, since the boards are similar with the newer one having an upgraded chipset, you may be able to use recovery media to sort out why it's not booting up. Sometimes you get lucky and the OS will just load up without too much, or any fuss at all.

Did you ever try disabling CSM mode or secure boot (if applicable) as suggested by another user?

 

[SabaII]

Well, since the boards are similar with the newer one having an upgraded chipset, you may be able to use recovery media to sort out why it's not booting up. Sometimes you get lucky and the OS will just load up without too much, or any fuss at all.

Did you ever try disabling CSM mode or secure boot (if applicable) as suggested by another user?

I did try and disable CSM last night and there was no change. Secure boot was never enabled so I left that alone. I didn't have a ton of time to play with it last night so I am hoping tonight I will be able to sit down and figure it out.

 

[EXCellR8]

You might just need Windows to re-create the EFI partition/boot sec on the drive; then make sure it's listed as UEFI boot device. Reboot, and you should be able to load Windows.

If not, you might be better of cutting your losses and just migrating data after a fresh install. Annoying, yes, but I assume you want it working and don't want to spend more time troubleshooting.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

So after I swapped everything over I went straight into bios to check that everything was registering and it was. I exited bios and when it restarted it shot me right back into the bios menu. I restarted and went into the boot menu. The drive registered and I selected the correct drive but it then went into this weird boot loop where it kept loading right back up into the boot menu. So then I put a USB drive in that I thought had Windows 10 on it and it was at that point it gave me the message there was no valid boot drive found. I hung it up for the night after that.

At this point, pull the m.2 and use a fresh stick with 10, Mint, whatev, on it. Once you have established it can boot from the OS stick, then put the m.2 back in. If it still does not work, it is probably toast.

 

[VirtualLarry]

One other thing: The "first-stage" bootloader resides in the UEFI. If you swap boards, you have to re-register the bootloader for the on-disk OS install with the UEFI again, before it will boot. At least, technically.