I'm experiencing an SSD problem that has really stumped me. Here's the background:
On a second computer, an Acer Aspire ATC-780A, I installed an M.2 6GB/s SSD (M and B keyed). It worked well for about a year, and then, with increasing frequency, each time I cold booted the machine, I would get an error that no boot device was detected. While I was able to get it to boot most of the time when this occurred, it eventually got to the point where the SSD seemed to have failed, and I did a warranty exchange. In the interim, I installed Windows on an old mechanical HD.
Due to all the supply chain issues, it was going to take some time for the new SSD to ship to me. After doing some research on the motherboard in this computer, I discovered that it would accept an NVMe SSD. I went ahead and purchased one, attached it to the motherboard, cloned Windows, did a quick boot sector fix, and was up and running splendidly for several weeks.
Until I did a cold boot (!!) This time, however, instead of getting a no boot device detected error, somehow, it seems that there is now a BIOS password on the SSD! A menu pops up showing that the SSD is "locked" and asks me to enter a password. After several failed attempts at entering a password, the menu says I need to contact Acer customer support with this issue, and spits out an error code (which changes each time this occurs).
It is a complete mystery to me how this BIOS HD password on the SSD was set - there is not even an option to set an HD password in the BIOS for this machine (in contrast, I am able to set a BIOS password to enter the BIOS...).
Does anyone have any ideas what on earth is going on here? Is this a virus? Is this motherboard's M.2 slot on the fritz? I'm so stumped by this.
On a second computer, an Acer Aspire ATC-780A, I installed an M.2 6GB/s SSD (M and B keyed). It worked well for about a year, and then, with increasing frequency, each time I cold booted the machine, I would get an error that no boot device was detected. While I was able to get it to boot most of the time when this occurred, it eventually got to the point where the SSD seemed to have failed, and I did a warranty exchange. In the interim, I installed Windows on an old mechanical HD.
Due to all the supply chain issues, it was going to take some time for the new SSD to ship to me. After doing some research on the motherboard in this computer, I discovered that it would accept an NVMe SSD. I went ahead and purchased one, attached it to the motherboard, cloned Windows, did a quick boot sector fix, and was up and running splendidly for several weeks.
Until I did a cold boot (!!) This time, however, instead of getting a no boot device detected error, somehow, it seems that there is now a BIOS password on the SSD! A menu pops up showing that the SSD is "locked" and asks me to enter a password. After several failed attempts at entering a password, the menu says I need to contact Acer customer support with this issue, and spits out an error code (which changes each time this occurs).
It is a complete mystery to me how this BIOS HD password on the SSD was set - there is not even an option to set an HD password in the BIOS for this machine (in contrast, I am able to set a BIOS password to enter the BIOS...).
Does anyone have any ideas what on earth is going on here? Is this a virus? Is this motherboard's M.2 slot on the fritz? I'm so stumped by this.
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