Windows stops booting when I add Crucial P5 to HP Z600/Z800 as a data drive

[crueprich]

I added a Crucial P5 to a HP Z600 as a secondary drive. I am aware of this system not being able to boot from NVMe, so I want windows to continue booting from a SATA-SSD.

However, as soon as I add the P5 to the system, Windows 10 (2004, 64bit) stops being able to boot and freezes while showing the blue windows logo. Safe mode doesn't help. Even booting from a USB drive created with Microsofts Media Creation Tool results in the system freezing on the blue windows logo.

Linux on the other hand is able to boot and is able to access the drive. Any ideas?

Edit: Out of curiosity, I tried adding the drive to a Z800 running Windows Server Essentials 2019 and it also freezes on the windows logo.

[SDH]

Well, that sure looks like a M.2 stick, presumably in a PCIe adapter card.  And, NVMe too.  Won't work.  Might work in a Z440/Z640.  You won't be able to teach those old faithful dogs this new trick, unfortunately.  The BIOS has no idea what to do with that hardware.

[crueprich]

If it's really just down to the bios being too old for NVMe, why is Linux able to boot and use the P5? I understand that the old bios won't be able to boot from NVMe drives, but as far as I can tell they should work as a secondary drive.

If you read https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Booting-to-NVMe-ON... there are reports from people using a USB drive as a bootloader to boot the Z800 from a Samsung 970 EVO, which is also a M.2 / NVMe drive:

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booting nvme on the z800 is easier than the z820 as there is no usb key swapping involved during setup 

however you do need to use DUET + Refind (not just refind) in creating the nvme boot usb key

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[DGroves]

the z800 has it's quirks, and i've seen some of them BTW: i'm the person who helped some others boot from nvme using duet/refind, and did so on my z800

one known quirk is that the samsung sm951 (AHCI ver) will not work in a z800 as a boot drive, it's seen but the partitioning phase will fail it will also not work as a data drive take your pick on who to blame HP or samsung

in regards as to the crucial P5 ssd, what size it? and does it and the  m.2 carrier work in other systems?

does linux work with the ssd/carrier as a data drive when installing linux on the z800? if so then the issue is with the z800 bios and windows OS

you might be able to work around this by booting the nvme  using duet/refind note the z800 requires the 20015 ver of this app due to introduced bugs related to the triple channel memory controller used in the z800

pm me if interested

[crueprich]

definitely interested. Will send you PM after this post.

to your questions:

- My P5 is the 1TB version

- The P5 and its carrier work in my AMD Ryzen 3900 / MSI X570 gaming edge wifi. In that system windows boots without any issue.

- The P5 is also working as a data drive in an AMD Phenom II X6 / Gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UD3H system, which is about the same age as the Z600/Z800, also has PCIe 2.0, SATA2, no UEFI and no bios support for booting NVMe

- I didn't try installing Linux on the Z800, only used a (Ubuntu) live USB stick. I did however try partitioning, formatting, writing files to as well as reading them from the P5. Linux is also able to read and write files to/from the SATA SSD with my windows installation on it while the P5 is installed.

- I did some more tinkering around and I got the Windows Installer to boot by disabling pretty much everything in the bios, including multi processor support and disconnecting the dvd drive (dvd drive was the only thing connected to the onboard sata ports, all SATA HDDs/SSDs are connected to a LSI RAID PCIe expansion card). The windows installer sees the P5, but refuses to install on it, because my system is unable to boot from it. I was able to start the installation process to an old SATA HDD. It copies the files, but on the first reboot to the new system it's back to freezing at the windows logo.

- I didn't try a 32bit WIn10 2004 (yet) as there is no 32bit Windows Server 2019, and that's what I'll need in the end.

[DGroves]

the LSI SAS/SATA controller is not the preferred controller to us for booting

the 2 native intel SATA ports and the Intel "SCU" ports next to them are preferred

win 10 has native driver support for all hardware on the z600/800

both the onboard nics and the LSI boot rom should be disabled (boot from onboard native SATA pot)

[crueprich · Accepted solution]

I was unable to get the P5 running in either the Z600 or the Z800. Booting the NVMe did not solve the issue. I also tried a few more things without success. Crucial support was completely useless and only informed me that they could not find any Crucial Upgrades for that HP Workstation...

FInally, I went and bought a Samsung 970 Evo and that one works perfectly. No idea why one works, but not the other. Both are 1GB M2/NVMe drives, both use PCIe 3.0 x4 (obviously running in PCIe 2.0 mode in the Z600/Z800).