M.2 960 EVO problems / Q-Code A0

[Xwolfe84]

So I got my M.2 960 Evo and my WIN 10 Pro usb today. Installed the M.2. Go into BIOS, its showing up correctly, m.2 960 evo, 2x WD Blue 250gb ssd's, and my 3tb hdd. Thank God.

Install Windows 10 from the usb stick on to the 960 evo no issue. Huzzah! its alive! Windows installation reboots the pc, I login to windows, didn't touch nothing it was just sitting at desktop, then go to make a deposit at the great white throne for a few minutes and come back, PC is completely black screened.

Power down and restart, restart again, disconnect power cord then clear cmos and reboot (did this three times). After each of these five restarts, I get the exact same result. I go through complete POST, it beeps, and the ROG screen comes up with hit F2 /Del option to enter BIOS etc, and its frozen. Q-Led shows A0 each time.

Researched 'AO', means IDE inititialization started, or POST was good and handed ops over to the OS as I understand. Could be a GPU problem supposedly, so I try different GPU , same result, Frozen ROG screen with A0 code,

So I remove the M.2 drive, clear cmos, reboot and POST comes up clean, ROG screen loads and I can get into BIOS with no problems. Its detecting my 2 other 250gb sata SSD's and my 3tb HDD no problem.

At this point I say eff it and install Windows 10 Pro on one of my 250GB WD Blue SSD's. Everything went smoothly and Win 10 Pro is running great, I rebooted 3 - 4 times to make sure there were no issues and each time its up in 15 seconds.

At this point I'm still irritated about the m.2 drive. SO I power down , go back into BIOS, make sure the EUFI Windwos boot loader partition on the WD BLue 250 gb SSD or w/e its called is first in boot load order in BIOS and power down again. I reinstall the 960 EVO and power up, same result, POST beeps fine, but goes to ROG screen and is unresponsive with A0 q-led code. I power off, remove the M.2 , restart, it POSTS, went to a black scree, restarted itself again for whatever reason, and POST's again fine, and loads windows.

So at this point the my System runs fine, stable and running Windows 10 pro from the OS install on the WD Blue 250gb SSd.

The M.2 drive has my original Win 10 Pro install on it AFAIK, but whenever the 960 is installed in my system, the Mobo will do a complete post but freeze on ROG screen and become unresponsive, with Q-led code A0. Reading up on these it seems some have had them go Kaput 15min to 2 hours after theyre out of the box, but seeing as I have no other computers with an m.2 slot and I cant get into bios with it installed, is there another way to test the drive, or do these descriptions indicate I was sent a Defective product?

System:
Ryzen 1800x
Crosshair VI hero x370
MAsterliquid 120
Gskill Tridentz RGB F4-3600c16D-16GTZR
R7 250 1gb (was gtx 760, will install my 1070 once all the kinks are worked out on this platform)
EVGA Supernova 1000w 80+ gold
2x Western Digital Blue 250gb SSD
1x Seagate Barracude 3 tb HDD
60x Xanax and 4 Bottles of Jack to help me calm my nerves when dealing with the abhorrent quirkiness of the new AM4 platform

[Zka17]

Whenever you install Windows, have only the storage on which you want the OS! If you had all those SSDs and the HDD connected, then you were looking for trouble...
First install Windows on the M.2 SSD, then connect the other drives.

[Xwolfe84]

flashed to bios 0038 this morning. posts and goes into bios np.

Removed all storage, only 960 evo installed on board. same result, post clears, 1 beep, goes to rog screen, and its unresponsive and frozen on the rog screen.

gotta go to work now so no more time to test...

[pankomputerek]

Zka17 wrote:
Whenever you install Windows, have only the storage on which you want the OS! If you had all those SSDs and the HDD connected, then you were looking for trouble...
First install Windows on the M.2 SSD, then connect the other drives.

I can double up on that! I selected SSD to install windows on before. Windows was installed on SSD but the Boot Drive was a hard drive not the drive that system was installed on.

[Xwolfe84]

The win 10 usb is fine, the issue os the m.2 drive.

no matter the configuratiom, whenever the 960 evo is installed , the computer will post but freeze on the splash screen with q-led code A0. i even started the win 10 install, then put the 960 in while on the directory selection screen for the installation, it didnt detect it before as it had when i first installed windows 10 on it. guess its dead, time to refund and get another and hope for the best.

[chevell65]

If you haven't already done this, try reformatting the USB drive with Rufus before putting Windows on it. https://rufus.akeo.ie/

[Zka17]

Did you had any of your drives in RAID?
Are you booting in UEFI mode?

[Xwolfe84]

No RAID at all, my goal was to get this build up and running on default settings before fine tuning or experimenting with anything.

Yes , booting into UEFI mode.

To reiterate, when i first installed the M.2, the computer posted fine and it was detected in BIOS, no issues. Then proceeded to install WIN 10 Pro on it from a USB, that went fine, the 960 was detected by the Windows installation and the installation completed onto the 960. After completing the installation , i loaded windows and ran windows update and let it sit , i come back 5 minutes later and its black screened. I rebooted the pc and everytime since it blackscreened any further attempts to power on the system with the 960 installed ends with a succesful POST, then it goes to Splash screen and is completely unresponsive, with q-code A0. Ive updated from 0902 to 0038 Bios, removed all drives with just m.2 installed , ran Win 10 install again and then reinserted the m.2 on the mobo while at the Drive slection screen but it wont detect it, few other things i cant recall specifically step by step. No matter what i try it all gives me the same result anytime the m.2 is in the slot before powering on the pc, frozen splash screen with A0 q-led code.

So im at a loss as to why it would freeze after POST every time with the m.2 present.

[Evanair]

I'm seriously in question of if the M.2 drive itself is working anymore, considering you said you hot swapped it on drive selection. M.2 isn't hot swap-able.

I run an Evo 960 as well, windows pro from USB. Same idea. I have no issues on any of the 4 BIOS's I've ran on the motherboard. Probably more of a hardware problem than anything at this point.

[os2wiz]

Evanair wrote:
I'm seriously in question of if the M.2 drive itself is working anymore, considering you said you hot swapped it on drive selection. M.2 isn't hot swap-able.

I run an Evo 960 as well, windows pro from USB. Same idea. I have no issues on any of the 4 BIOS's I've ran on the motherboard. Probably more of a hardware problem than anything at this point.

WellI have a 950 Pro NVMe m.2 driveand the same problem exists for MSI x370 Titanium. Windows initially installs, the screen eventually goes blan within the windows 10 Pro u.i, Not able to boot again. Another 950 Pro m.2 NVME user has the same problem. There is some hardware level incompatibility or bios issue. I even check drive health status with Samsung Magician software version 5.0 ands it reports the drive has good health. So there is NO defect in the drive yet this problem happens again and again and the mere presence of the drive in the system prolongs bios post up by several minutes. This is no error of the user or the drive.It is a problemwither m.2 implemetation on all the x370 boards or the bios has some defect. I am waiting for MSI tech support to get back to me. I hada Crosshair VI but had toreturn it as it failed tio post due to some toxic bios. It happened to more than half those who purchased it at my Micro Center store.I understand Asus has frecently come out with a better bios. I will miss my ROG board.. I had bought 3 different Crosshair boards over the past 7 years.