Plextor M .2

[JemTheWire]

I am a bit stuck.

I have have a working rig running Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit booting UFEI off a Crucial MX100 SSD. Wanting to tweak and push my hardware, I purchased an M .2 PCIe SSD.

The thing is, I make regular clone backup's of my hard drives, including Windows.

The M .2 is installed and enabled in the UFEI menu following tips I read here. Rather than have to re-install Windows again, I wanted to restore a clone of my Windows installation cloned from the Crucial SSD. I cannot get it to work.

At at boot I get the ROG logo and the 'spinning wheel' that usually means that Windows is loading, but then it stops and says problem and reboots.

Is there a way to make this work without installing Windows from scratch?

[MeanMachine]

Hi JemTheWire. If you have cloned your HDD to an SSD then you would encounter a problem.

If you have a windows installation without AHCI enabled, then a registry fix is required.
To resolve this issue, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps:
Exit all Windows-based programs.

Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE-System-CurrentControlSet-Services-msahci
In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.
After this you’ll have to restart your computer, go to BIOS and enable AHCI. When you log in to Windows again, you’ll notice the installation of drivers for AHCI. Another restart will be required to finish the driver installation.

Have you checked in Bios that AHCI mode is enabled, once enabled, restart, enter Bios again and configured correctly?.

Also check boot priority to boot from SSD.

[JemTheWire]

Thanks for the reply, but the cloned image was from my system the already has ACHI enabled.

I have tried a fresh copy of Windows (UEFI) and booted OK to the first screen so I know it all works from a hardware perspective. After I did the clean install, I then installed the cloned version I had previously made from my SSD and rebooted. The PC still fails to complete the boot process. I get to then ROG image with the spinning wheel, then it crashes..

EDIT: Just to add, I have noticed that since installs the M .2 SSD, the HDD activity LED has changed in operation. It is now permenantly on and flickers with disk activity. This is differnt from previous when the HDD LED would be off and then come on with disk activity.