M.2 issues

[f1schu]

Hi there. I have a rampage v extreme which is running a 5820k, 2x r9 290 gpus and a soundblaster z soundcard.
I just purchased a new Samsung 960 Evo M.2 ssd, got home and I plugged in the new drive into the M.2 slot on the rampage and booted up the system. At first everything seemed okay as the drive was showing in the bios and the windows install configuration. I started to install windows to the M.2 drive and it all went okay until the system rebooted and gave me an error about something to do with not being able to find locale.
After a few more attempts at trying to install windows with no success the system then started to hang at the bios splash screen. I tried both bios 1 and 2 and both would get stuck at the splash screen with the boot device led on the rampage staying on.
As soon as I remove the M.2 drive it boots fine on both bios 1 & 2.

Now when I purchased the Samsung 960 evo from Maplin the box was open and the guy told me that they had a spate of shoplifting and because of that removed the drive from it's box but assured me that it was brand new. I'm now thinking that may not be the case and it's a faulty drive, or the fact that I'm using a 5820k that has only 28 lanes but I'm not so sure as my first gpu is running at x16 and the second one at x8 equaling 24 lanes leaving 4 for the M.2. Like I mentioned previously I also have a soundblaster z plugged into the pcie x1 slot but was told that the pcie x1 Lane is supplied by the x99 chipset and not the cpu so it should not affect anything.
Just to be sure I unplugged the soundcard and it made no difference. As soon as the M.2 drive is installed the system gets stuck at the splash screen.

Do you think it's a faulty drive? Or something else?

[glock19er]

Did you go into drive management and initiate and format the drive?

Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

[iluv2fly]

The drive may still be new. There are plenty of issues for a lot of people to get their M2 drives working. I don't have your board so I am pretty useless. I just want to encourage you to plow thru the forums to see what you can find for your motherboard. There is not enough info of how to properly set up a M2 in ASUS manuals but M2 drives are also new tech. Given time hopefully it will become better. My EVO960 works great. There is no place in my Bios where it says M2 specifically it just works anyways.

The following link may give you some guidance.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?74678-How-to-boot-windows-from-you-m-2-SM-951-on-Asus-Maxi...

[Riicckk]

During install of Windows did you install the Samsung NVME driver. Here http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/consumer.html
It wont work or install without it....

[f1schu]

Riicckk wrote:
During install of Windows did you install the Samsung NVME driver. Here http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/consumer.html
It wont work or install without it....

No I didn't as I was told they are not needed as windows has its own. I did try looking for the Samsung driver just to see if that was the issue but I could only find a .exe driver install, no manual one.

[Riicckk]

You are right, I am sorry. The driver listed is an .exe which cannot be extracted and used manually. I was under the impression that the driver needs to be installed under Win installation. With other bootable Samsung drives I always have to install the Intel Sata driver (probably not needed here of course) the Asmedia driver and the Intel turbo drivers at Windows install. It is only with Samsung drives: other drives like Sandisk don't need any install drivers to load.
Sorry to ramble, but it still looks like you are missing a driver.
There seems to be a whole lot of problems with bootable Samsung 960 NVME drives.

[f1schu]

I disconnected all 3 of my other sata ssds just leaving my standard hard drive that I use for storage still connected as it was a pain to get to it.
Connected the M.2 drive in the m2 socket on the r5e.
Cleared cmos and reset to optimised defaults.
Entered bios to check drive was recognised, M.2 drive appeared in boot selecton.
Checked to make sure bios was still set to uefi mode.
Changed boot option to boot from uefi usb (windows 10 install).
Rebooted pc, Windows install ran.
M.2 drive appeared in disk selection along with my storage hdd that I didn't disconnect.
Setup windows 10 to install to the M.2 which partitioned and formated the drive.
Windows install went okay until the part when it reboots itself to finish the install and then gave a 'Windows could not set the offline locale information' error.
Then tried again to install but this time got a 'setup cannot configure windows for your hardware' error when windows install rebooted.
Now if M.2 drive is installed system hangs at bios splash screen.

I returned the drive to maplin and got a full refund. They didn't have anymore in stock so will buy another online and try again.

[iluv2fly]

f1schu wrote:
I disconnected all 3 of my other sata ssds just leaving my standard hard drive that I use for storage still connected as it was a pain to get to it.
Connected the M.2 drive in the m2 socket on the r5e.
Cleared cmos and reset to optimised defaults.
Entered bios to check drive was recognised, M.2 drive appeared in boot selecton.
Checked to make sure bios was still set to uefi mode.
Changed boot option to boot from uefi usb (windows 10 install).
Rebooted pc, Windows install ran.
M.2 drive appeared in disk selection along with my storage hdd that I didn't disconnect.
Setup windows 10 to install to the M.2 which partitioned and formated the drive.
Windows install went okay until the part when it reboots itself to finish the install and then gave a 'Windows could not set the offline locale information' error.
Then tried again to install but this time got a 'setup cannot configure windows for your hardware' error.
Now if M.2 drive is installed system hangs at bios splash screen.

I returned the drive to maplin and got a full refund. They didn't have anymore in stock so will buy another online and try again.

Fyi I could not boot my EVO 960 in UEFI mode when I first started. Windows completely blocked it out. Maybe that is why it stopps working when windows rebots. I had to use LEGACY mode. UEFI windows started to work after had installed windows in legacy mode and installed current Samsung drivers. It was after that Windows UEFI started to work for me.

[f1schu]

Thanks for the help, I will give that ago when I get my new one in a couple of days. I was under the impression that the 960 evo could only boot in uefi mode so didn't try the legacy option. The strange thing is that it worked fine when I first tried to install windows to it but after that it made my system hang at the bios splash screen. I tried clearing the cmos, removed the battery, removed and replaced the 960, changed from bios 1 to 2 but no matter what I did the system would hang at the splash screen if the 960 was in the M.2 socket

[Brighttail]

The 960's and 961's have had some issues with the RVE and RVE10. You absolutely need to load windows using the UEFI BIOS, otherwise there will be problems. If you can't find it when you go to load windows you have to change your BIOS to have boot search for UEFI only and the boot from PCI-E to UEFI first (to be safe or if you are using a PCI-e card).

To be 100% sure nothing else is interfering, I disconnect all my other SATA SSD/HDDs during the initial installation. This way none of them accidentally get marked or confused as a boot drive.

If all this fails, you can always go into CSM and disable it and load the Samsung drivers through the Windows Installation program, using the 'have disk" option. There are several write ups about this way, but honestly you really shouldn't need it.

There is a little bug at least on the RVE10 where if you change some of the settings in BIOS after Windows has loaded up, the 960/961 will suddenly not be recognized by BIOS. Not sure why this is but I have figured out how to get around it. It only happens if you make changes tho.

1. Make your changes to BIOS you want. Save the profile in BIOS.
2. Now load optimal Defaults, save and exit BIOS
3. Enter BIOS again you should be able to check that your M.2 is now being recognized. Simply load your old profile, save and exit. You should be able to boot into windows now.

So long as you make no other adjustments to BIOS this should fix it.