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M.2 not showing on boot menu.

StevenT

StevenT

Joined
Jun 20, 2020
Messages
10 (0.01/day)
Location
U.S
System Specs
System Name Klay
Processor Intel - i7-9700k
Motherboard ASUS Rog strix Z-390-F Gaming ATX LGA 1151
Cooling Corsair iCue H100i RGB 75 CM liquid cooling
Memory Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory
Video Card(s) EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB BLACK GAMING Video Card
Storage Samsung 970 Evo Plus 250 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Display(s) Acer KG241, Acer XF240H both 144hz
Case Cool Master MasterBox TD500 Mesh White w/ Controller ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Mouse Corsair Scorpion RGB Black
Keyboard Corsair K70 RGB Black
Software Windows 10 home
Hi after being on ASUS support for hours, spending a few hours at a friends I still cannot get the m.2 to show in the boot menu. When I plug in my other hard drive with windows the m.2 appears as a viable memory stick. I’m not really sure what to do my bios is fully updated and everything is plugged in correctly. This drive has m.2 slots and I used the first one. I’m not really sure what to do anymore ASUS straight up hung up on me after two hours of not being able to figure it out. I’ve never posted on here but my specs should show up. Any help is welcomed, my worst case scenario is that I just can’t use m2 to boot which kinda defeats the purpose of buying it.
The error I’ve received when trying to instal windows on the m.2 was a failure to create partition.
Thank you for your time.
 
"This drive has m.2 slots and I used the first one. " - what is the card?
Formatted MBR or GPT? Windows will not install on GPT formatted.
 
It’s a 970 Evo plus NVme m.2. I’ve installed windows on a buddies before and I haven’t had any issues thus far. I haven’t looked up much on what to do in terms of formatting because I haven’t had this issue before. I could try running a MBR formatting for it.
 
StarExplorer said:
"This drive has m.2 slots and I used the first one. " - what is the card?
Formatted MBR or GPT? Windows will not install on GPT formatted.
Click to expand...


Why? I have my USB install drive set to GPT with Rufus.
Haven't tried it yet, though.

So, further explanation, please. GPT USB drive won't install on MBR and will install on GPT SSD or HDD?
 
StevenT said:
It’s a 970 Evo plus NVme m.2. I’ve installed windows on a buddies before and I haven’t had any issues thus far. I haven’t looked up much on what to do in terms of formatting because I haven’t had this issue before. I could try running a MBR formatting for it.
Click to expand...
You want GPT, not MBR, but if the UEFI can't see it as a bootable device, you might simply be looking for the wrong thing.
Rather than the drive itself, the UEFI tends to show something a bit weird as the boot option, like a Windows something or the other (I can't remember what it says from the top of my head).
You also need to prepare a GPT enabled USB stick to install Windows from, as the default is still MBR afaik.
Try this:
www.easeus.com

How to Install Windows 11/10 on GPT Partition in 2025

Can't install Windows 11/10 on GPT partition? This page shows you how to install Windows 11/10 on GPT partition successfully in the easiest way. Try it when GPT partition style preventing Windows 10 Installation with the error message 'Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk...
www.easeus.com www.easeus.com
 
Can confirm my m.2 is GPT formatted. When I’m in my bios and I have my boot options pulled up the m.2 is simply not there. It is still in the bios as a storage device. I’m going to now check the formatting of the usb I’m using to install it.
 
Confirming my installation hard drive is set to MBR
 
StevenT said:
Confirming my installation hard drive is set to MBR
Click to expand...
Follow the instructions above to make one that you can install to a GPT partition with.
 
Will do, thank you for your time I will post an update when I get results.

Hi it’s still not wanting to work. A side note I have no idea why that first drive pattern shows up. On my friends build it did not.

451CB682-EA7D-4516-AA65-D52D13DF080E.jpeg
 
It's the boot loader file, reserved partition for a GPT system, 16MB is the minimum size.
Odd name calling it Microsoft Reserved reserved :p it's a bit like saying ATM machine.
 
yep the diskpart clean disk to reset is norm the way to go (just make sure you select the correct disk make sure you do "list disk" first before doing "select disk x" or you will nuke the incorrect disk , Note the clean command does not ask it immediately does it)

when you go to install windows on the empty space just press next the setup will automatically create the 3 partitions (if it was booted via UEFI it be GPT, 2 partitions if MBR system was booted using legacy boot)
 
So the craziest thing happen. I went to work for a few days and finally got time to get back too it. Booted it up and it installed without me doing anything. Other than reformatting the usb install to the m2 formatting I didn’t do anything else it just started working. Thank you for the help everyone.
 
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