I recently purchased a Samsung 990 Pro NVME drive. I wanted to replace my slow HDD. I had successfully did this with my wife’s PC (Dell Precision T5800). Windows 10 saw the NVME drive I installed in the PCI Express slot. I was also able to use Samsung Magician software to clone my HDD onto the NVME.
Sadly I soon learned the hard way that I cannot boot from NVME on my Dell Precision T3600. I did some googling and asking chat GPT and eventually found these forums with instructions on how to add NVME support to my BIOS. I followed this post [HowTo] Get full NVMe Support for all Systems with an AMI UEFI BIOS
Here is what I have done:
I set the service Jumper on my mainboard.
I used fptw64 to dump my BIOS using fptw64 -f bios_dump.bin
I used UEFITool to insert the NVME module (NvmExpressDxe_5)
I saved the BIOS.bin and used a bootable usb with FreeDOS to run fpt and flash my new Bios.
that went successfully but I cannot see how to boot from the NVME and I see no new options in the BIOS menu.
Any help on this would be much appreciated. I cannot seem to find where to go from here. I did see several other users post they have got this working on their T3600 so I am hopeful.
If its a new disk or doesn’t have a previous EFI boot partition created by a previous UEFI OS installation, then you wont unless, most boards, setting the bios as CSM ON (Legacy) and it may show a PATA_SS… this is all described in the mentioned guide, care to read a bit more of it on Step 4 - Installation of Win10/11 onto the NVMe SSD
It’s advisable to perform clean OS installations (All other disks disconnected) rather than cloning or using previously cloned MBR Legacy OS.
Good luck.
Yes I have read step 4. I saw no option for CSM in the BIOS but I did have the option for Legacy/ UEFI. I tried both options. the strange thing I do notice is that my primary SADA HDD does not show up. I think it may be because my primary HDD is connected to a raid controller on a PCI slot and not the SATA connectors on the mainboard. I did read somewhere about that. My disk is also not LEGACY MBR it is GPT UEFI. I do see in disk managment my primary disk shows as Raid and the other drive shows as NvME
@jbeck2862
Welcome to the Win-Raid Forum!
As MeatWar already has written, you should do a clean Win10/11 install onto your NVMe SSD by following Step 4 of my Guide, but this will only work, if your BIOS modification to get full NVMe support has been done correctly. You can check it yourself by setting the BIOS mode temporarily to “Legacy” and looking into the shown “bootable devices”. If a device named “PATA” (or similar) is listed there, everything seems to be ok. If you should not see such device within the “BOOT” section of the BIOS running in “Legacy mode”, you should attach the original and your modded BIOS. This way we can check it for you.
Don’t forget to reset the BIOS to “UEFI” before you proceed!
It doesn’t show up where?
Please attach a screenshot of your system’s Device Manager with expanded “Disk Drives” and “Storage Controllers” sections.
Your guide was very helpful, and I will try a fresh install as you suggested once I get the NVMe to show up. The Device Manager shows all my disks just fine, but the BIOS does not show any disks. I figured out that my PC has a RAID controller card installed, and the primary SATA HDD is connected to that rather than the onboard SATA slots. I read somewhere that RAID might cause issues, but I can’t seem to find that information anymore. I also read that the Intel C600 chipset might be involved, but from what I’m seeing in other posts, it should work with chipsets that don’t typically support NVMe boot.
That is the expected situation as long as the BIOS is running in UEFI mode, because the NVMe SSD doesn’t contain until now an EFI boot partition. Provided, that the NVMe module has been properly inserted into the BIOS, you will see the BIOS entry “Windows Boot Manager” after having done a clean install of Win10/11 according to my guide.
I will do a deeper look into your modded BIOS this evening.
Update: @jbeck2862
This way I cannot help you. I don’t get access to your uploaded BIOS files.
Your uploaded 61MB sized file named Bios.rar cannot be scanned by the Google Antivirus tool due to its size. I asked you for the original and your modded BIOS, not for 9 pictures. Please upload both BIOS files separately and give them easy to differ names (e.g. “original_bios.bin” and “modded_bios.bin”).
Thanks for the new upload.
I have checked both files and couldn’t find any error regarding the insertion of the NVMe module.
Does the BIOS show a device named “PATA” as being bootable while running in Legacy mode?
Thank you for your assistance! I’m happy to report that I finally got my NVMe drive working as the boot drive.
Initially, I wanted to avoid a clean install because it took over 6 hours to clone my 4TB HDD to the Samsung 990 Pro, only to realize it wouldn’t boot. Since it wasn’t working, I created a Windows installation USB drive this morning with the intention of doing a clean install. However, before proceeding, I decided to try repairing the boot partition on the NVMe using BCDBOOT. My reasoning was that the primary drive was configured in RAID and connected to a RAID controller, so when I cloned the drive, it also cloned the RAID bootloader, which might be causing the issue.
Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to fix the problem. So, I powered down, unplugged the primary HDD connected to the RAID controller, and booted back up from the Windows installation USB. The PC initially gave me a warning that no drives were found. Before going ahead with the installation, I tried the repair option, which also said it failed.
I then restarted my PC, expecting the same “no drives found” warning, but I forgot to press F12 to select boot options. Surprisingly, instead of being stuck, I was taken directly to the Windows login screen, and I was able to log into Windows from the NVMe drive! It’s now working smoothly.