Question PC won't boot after adding M2 SSD

[bdubyah]

So I've been running a 500gb 850 EVO as my OS drive, with a couple WD HDDs for storage. Decided to upgrade to a Sabrent Rocket 2tb M2 NVME SSD for the OS drive and a 870 EVO 4TB SSD as the main storage, with my 4TB WD HDD serving as a backup of sorts.

Installed the Sabrent and the 870 while removing the 2TB WD HDD as it will go to my old PC to run game server. PC will no longer boot. Can get into the BIOS fine, and I can see all the drives, the Sabrent, 870, 850, and the 4TB WD. Everything looks fine as far as I can tell. But when I exit and it tried to boot, it goes to a black screen after the AORUS splash screen. I can see the little blinking line as if I can type, like a cmd prompt. It flickers back and forth a few times and then dumps me back at the BIOS. Tried going into the F12 boot screen and making sure the 850 was still first and it was. But it won't boot from it.

Took the Sabrent back out and unplugged the new 870 so the only ones hooked up are the old 850 and the old WD 4TB. Again, BIOS shows them fine but same deal, no boot. Basically the only thing different now from when it was fine is the WD 2TB is still removed, but it was just a storage drive for games and stuff.

Any ideas what's going on here?

Specs that I can remember off the top of my head:

Gigabyte AORUS Z370 Gaming 5 (tried upgrading to the newest BIOS)
I7-8700K
32GB GSKILL Trident DDR4 3200
ASUS ROG 1080Ti
Seasonic 850W Gold PSU

 

[deustroop]

Plug in only the 850-no other-will it boot ? Plug in only the 850 and the 2TB WD HDD. Will they boot ?

 

[vailr]

Try removing the video card and use the on-board Intel GPU for video. There appears to be an issue where switching to an alternate boot drive can (inadvertently) mess with the motherboard's video out port selection. May need to adjust the bios settings in order to allow video out from the on-board Intel GPU, which may then require clearing the CMOS, either by shorting two pins (while the PSU is turned off) or removing the button battery. Note: if you clear the CMOS and then proceed to boot the machine with a video card installed, the video output signal will initially be automatically routed through the video card, and the on-board Intel video-out port remains blank or unusable.

 

[fralexandr]

have you read page 22 of the motherboards user manual?
Using M2 slots on your board disables some sata slots. You'll want to use SATA 1 through SATA 3. SATA 0, 4, and 5 get disabled by some of the M2 Slots.

Don't know why it wasn't working with no M2 drives connected though.

https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_z370-aorus-gaming-5_1002_e_190520.pdf

the PCIE x4 slot also shares bandwidth with M2P, so best not to use M2P if you have something plugged into the x4 slot.

Do you have any additional M2/PCIe cards installed?

Might be best to have only the sabrent installed while installing windows.

 

[Shmee]

Is it possible that Windows put a system partition on your 2TB storage drive? Sometimes when installing Windows on a system with more than one drive, this can happen. Windows can be stupid like that.

 

[bigboxes]

I'm confused. You used to use your 850 EVO (SATA) as the OS drive. Did you remove all the drives and install the OS successfully onto just the Sabrent? If so, then when did you experience boot issues? When you installed the OS to the Sabrent? When you added the 870 EVO (NVMe)? When you added the 850 EVO? How exactly do you have the 850 EVO set up?

 

[solidsnake1298]

Check to see if your BIOS is set to boot into legacy mode or UEFI mode. For NVMe boot drives you must be in UEFI mode.

 

[bdubyah]

Sorry, forgot I posted here as well. Got it sorted out. The 2TB had a system bootloader on it so it wouldn't boot without it. Used bcdboot and fixed it.

 

[Shmee]

Nice, glad to hear it was resolved. So my suspicion was correct lol.