14-FQ0036CL and M2 NVMe SSD

[haimoc]

I have just bought 14-FQ0036CL laptop from Sams' Club.  I tried to upgrade RAM and installed a SSD 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 1 TB.  I have a problem that the BIOS: vF.52 failed to recognize the SSD after I put the SSD to the M2 slot.  The BIOS menu does not have option to set hard drive, so I am stuck with no solution.  The user manual of this laptop 14-fq0xxx specifies NVMe M.2 should work with this computer.  Could anyone help?  I guess there must be a BIOS version that will unlock the menu for me to set option for Hard Drive, but I am not sure where to get it.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

There are no provisions to 'unlock' the BIOS in any HP PC.  What you see is what you get.

Try temporarily disconnecting the 2.5" drive and boot from your W11 flash drive and see if it finds and installs on the NVMe SSD.

If not, perhaps the NVMe SSD's are not supported on notebooks with the AMD 3020e processors.

I also see that SATA M.2 SSD's are supported in the manual, and perhaps that is the only type M.2 SSD supported for notebooks with the AMD 3020e processors.

[haimoc]

Thanks Paul.  I would try your suggestion to boot the computer from a SD card with W11 on it and install W11 on the M2 drive.

Assuming that I'd be successful to get W11 on the M2 drive.  Do you think the BIOS would recognize the M2 drive and boot from it?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

I don't believe that your notebook can boot from a SD card.  I don't know of any HP notebooks that can.

You will have to use a USB flash drive to create the W11 installation media.

Select the 2nd option from the link below to have the W11 installation USB flash drive automatically created for you.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11?ranMID=24542&ranEAID=nOD/rLJHOac&ranSite...

With the 2.5" drive temporarily disconnected, if you can install W11 on the NVMe SSD, then the PC should boot from it.

[haimoc]

I will try this option and hopefully it would work.  Thanks again, Paul.

[haimoc]

I successfully installed a M2 SATA SSD, cloned the disks from eMMC to M2, and reformatted the eMMC.  The computer now boots from M2 drive.  

Thanks Paul for your help with my question.  I should have decided to go with M2 SATA from beginning.  The HP manual is misleading to list  both NVMe and SATA for this notebook.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance, and thanks for letting us know that only SATA SSD's are supported for the models with the 64 GB eMMC drives.

I think that was the real problem, not the processor model.