Booting From Samsung SM951 SSD (NVMe Version)

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parsec and all,

My new system is working great.  Along with all the other all new and current technology hardware components, I purchased a Sapphire Nitro Radeon R9-380 4GB video card from Newegg.  The card is UEFI compatible.  I play games, so this card is good for being able to handle most games available today, at an affordable price ($214).  Top of the line cards can cost from around $500-$1,000!  Go figure.

Some of my other system hardware items are as follows:

ASRock Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard
Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake processor
Silverstone Fortress Z FTZ01B Mini-ITX case
Silverstone SOD02B slim slot load CD/DVD RW optical drive
Micron 16GB DDR4 RAM
Silverstone 450 Watt power supply, designed for above case (yes, big enough)
Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro 92mm CPU cooler
Windows 10 64 bit operating system

I like small cases, and the above case is amazing in that one can fit a full size video card in that case.  Designers must have taken a long time coming up with that configuration.  Take a look at that case.  It fits on top of my computer desk with the monitor sitting on it.  Perfect! No need for a big case anymore.

Dan

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Dan Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 28 Sep 2015 Location: Virginia USA Status: Offline Points: 122	Post Options Post Reply Quote Dan Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 06 Oct 2015 at 5:57pm
	parsec and all, My new system is working great. Along with all the other all new and current technology hardware components, I purchased a Sapphire Nitro Radeon R9-380 4GB video card from Newegg. The card is UEFI compatible. I play games, so this card is good for being able to handle most games available today, at an affordable price ($214). Top of the line cards can cost from around $500-$1,000! Go figure. Some of my other system hardware items are as follows: ASRock Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake processor Silverstone Fortress Z FTZ01B Mini-ITX case Silverstone SOD02B slim slot load CD/DVD RW optical drive Micron 16GB DDR4 RAM Silverstone 450 Watt power supply, designed for above case (yes, big enough) Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro 92mm CPU cooler Windows 10 64 bit operating system I like small cases, and the above case is amazing in that one can fit a full size video card in that case. Designers must have taken a long time coming up with that configuration. Take a look at that case. It fits on top of my computer desk with the monitor sitting on it. Perfect! No need for a big case anymore. Dan

Dan Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 28 Sep 2015 Location: Virginia USA Status: Offline Points: 122	Post Options Post Reply Quote Dan Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 07 Oct 2015 at 2:30am
	Parsed, In Device Manager, I have an open item titled PCI Simple Communications Controller. I'd prefer not to enable this feature. I believe the ASRock motherboard drivers CD has software called Intel Management Engine to enable this feature. I understand this feature allows network administrators to manage computers from a central location. As a home user, I see no need to enable this feature. I looked in the UEFI/BIOS, but i couldn't find anything to disable it. I'm not sure what I'm looking for, however. Do you have any advice on how I can eliminate this open item in my Device Manager, apart from installing the Intel Management Engine from the motherboard drivers CD? Dan

Badmojo Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 24 Oct 2015 Status: Offline Points: 2	Post Options Post Reply Quote Badmojo Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 24 Oct 2015 at 11:45pm
	This is an extremely helpful thread (which there are very few on the internet). I'm starting to research the same build, but am interested if the experts here could answer 1 deviation: Does a Windows 7 build have any additional complications or issues that must be resolved?

Badmojo Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 24 Oct 2015 Status: Offline Points: 2	Post Options Post Reply Quote Badmojo Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 24 Oct 2015 at 11:51pm
	I found this resource, but it sounds like an extremely complicated work around. I also don't have a Windows 8 copy to boot from. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/750_SSD_1.2_TB/3.html Our ASRock motherboard has full UEFI and NVMe support yet I could not install Windows 7 on the 750 Series SSD. Intel does provide an install-time driver, which does list the drive during Windows installation, but Windows kept insisting that the drive can not be used to boot from, and installation wouldn't continue. The same issue occured when the Windows 7 installer was started from within Windows. So...looks as though Windows 7 users are out of luck? Not exactly. I spent a couple days with this problem and figured out a complicated fix, but it does work. You basically want the Windows 8 bootmanager and UEFI loader partition on the drive, which then loads the Windows 7 EFI kernel loader. Install Windows 7 on a separate HDD/SSD, boot into it and install the Intel NVMe driver. Put that disk away for the moment and have the NVMe SSD as nothing more than a storage device. Boot off the Windows 8 install USB stick. Create one big partition spanning the whole drive, minus 100 GB. This big partition will be where Windows 7 will end up. Now, create a second partition with the 100 GB, which will be used as an installation target for Windows 8. You should also see the UEFI partition and system-restore partition at this point. Leave those alone. Go through with the Windows 8 installation and boot from Windows 8. Shut down and install the SSD that has Windows 7 on it. Format that big partition you made earlier and copy all files from the Windows 7 drive onto it. Windows Explorer won't work, but Robocopy works, so you can also clone the whole partition (not the whole disk), using an imaging tool. Now, download Visual BCD Editor and add a Windows 7 loader to the "Loaders" section. In Visual BCD Editor, set ApplicationDevice and BootDevice to the correct partition, probably D:. Change ApplicationPath to "\windows\system32\winload.efi". The efi at the end is the important part. Save and reboot, but keep the Windows 7 SSD installed. Windows will boot now, but it will boot from the D: partition and not C:. Fix the issue by using regedit to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices and swap the entries for \DosDevices\C: and \DosDevices\D: (just rename the key names). Power off and remove the Windows 7 SSD. Done! You can now delete the Windows 8 partition and expand the Windows 7 partition to use the space.