Stopped booting into W11 NvMe drive, still there in Explorer.

I had some minor issues, so I rebooted my W11 computer, then everything went to hell. My C drive is a 2 yr old 1Tb NvMe 980 drive. Stopped booting, showing the Win recovery options, BIOS got weird showing AMI BIOS a few times then went back to the GIgabyte UEFI. Long story short, one of my drives was my old SSD W10 drive. At first, I couldn't select it, but maybe after I selected Load Defaults, It showed all drives and I could select them in the UEFI ...BUT booting and trying to select the 980 drive to boot would not work... it booted to my alt boot drive, which I set to the W10SSD drive. It booted to that fine, and when I looked in Explorer I could see the 980 drive and all the files, even write to the files.
Does this sound like a boot manager issue? ANyway, I do have an image of the 980 drive about 3 mos old, but idk if I'm dealing with a drive issue or something else, since I can see all my files on the drive. I'm gonna mess with it some more and see if I can figure out anything interesting.
Just wondering if anything I did poking around in the UEFI BIOS changed something so it wont recognize a W11 system? BUT, it wouldn't boot into the drive before I changed anything in the BIOS.

What imaging software do you use? If Macrium Reflect, under the Restore menu, there's a option to Fix Windows Boot Problems...
Worth a shot.
Also, post a screenshot of Disk Management. Widen the columns so we can see the text.

Yes, it`s because you set the Bios back to Defaults.
It`s very simple to fix. You just have to set it up properly again.
TPM has to be enabled, Secure Boot has to be enabled, OS Type should be set to Windows UEFI mode, CSM has to be disabled, etc.
And yes, make sure you have the correct 980 M.2 chosen as your Boot device, the option that says Windows UEFI Manager 980 etc. something like that.
You have to make those corrections, then you should be able to boot from the 980.

Gone thru the drill and no matter what I do, it won't recognize the 980 drive... and the BIOS is strange cause it doesn't look the same way at different times, not giving me the option to use the 980 drive as the boot #1. Some boots I can select it, some boots it shows different drive boot numbers.

TPM has to be enabled (PTT in my mb)
Secure Boot has to be enabled,
OS Type should be set to Windows UEFI mode, (doesn't show me that option, but it did show the boot drive as windows uefi 980)
CSM has to be disabled, etc.( disabled then enabled it after setting secure...)
And yes, make sure you have the correct 980 listing chosen as your Boot device, the option that says Windows UEFI Manager 980 etc. something like that.

So I have a Macrium? Win 11 recovery drive but it won't boot to it and the files are xml and some other directory... forgive my ignorance but how can I use this to recover my BIOS or boot info? Guess I'll google that later.

Well, I just found a USB drive in my drawer from hell, and it was labelled Macrium Recovery Drive! I booted from it and searched for my latest image (Feb22), and saw an option to repair boot issues and ran that... YEAH! WIN 11 is back, Jack. Now I just need to figure out WHY the boot loader got screwed up, OR if I just had a file/UEFI glitch. Any ideas? IDK if I'll have issues next time I reboot or what?
OH, and the other W11 recovery drive I have is the USB you get when you run the "make a W11 recovery disk." duh

Ya have to disable everything except the new 1TB SSD, do that in the Bios and get Disk 0 booting on its own.
Why do you have a page file on Disk 0 on partition E ?
And why does it have a letter, it shouldn`t.
Format E and remove the letter, then the Page file should go to G when you reboot.
Extend G into the unallocated space to the right, with Partition Wizard.
And Disk 2 should not have a Page File on it.
The goal here is to get Disk 0 to boot on its own, and then W11 will be labeled C. Plain and simple.

Disk 1,2,3, and 4, have to be disabled before you go any further. You can do it in the Bios, but it is much easier and safer so we can get the job done right. Just disconnect their POWER cables, You DO NOT have to disconnect their Sata Data cables, only unplug what powers them up.

Page file... I asked about cleaning this drive up months ago on this forum but did not get any good answers... The Disk 0 was created like that when I copied the image from a smaller drive, actually the disk 3 that has W10 on it. I upgraded the new drive to W11 and that's what the upgrade process did to it... and I had to add the 500Mb at the end of the disk to upgrade for some reason. Disk 2 had the page file cause it was prob imaged from a Win8 system disk. I had page files on most drives on older OS's, ha, some may have vestiges of Win95 on them... and I don't have the paid Partition Wiz to extend the G... I think the free version won't do it unless it changed.
thanks for the great advice

With 32 GB of memory, you don`t even need a Page File unless a program demands it.
The free version of PW will extend G. If not, use Disk Management, PW Wizard should allow you to extend G.
You have to get the other drives powered off so we can proceed properly.
Yes, Disk 3 is fine for W10, but let`s get it out of the way for now.
Get all that done and post a new shot, it shouldn`t take you long at all.

AddRAM said:

Yes, it`s because you set the Bios back to Defaults.
It`s very simple to fix. You just have to set it up properly again.
TPM has to be enabled, Secure Boot has to be enabled, OS Type should be set to Windows UEFI mode, CSM has to be disabled, etc.
And yes, make sure you have the correct 980 listing chosen as your Boot device, the option that says Windows UEFI Manager 980 etc. something like that.
You have to make those corrections, then you should be able to boot from the 980.

Click to expand...

I do not have secure boot running, only TPM.

Yes, things can be changed after you install 11, and there are loads of ways to install 11 without all the requirements.
I don`t see how your comment helps the OP.
Let`s stay on topic and get the job done correctly :)

Looks and sounds like you never installed W11 properly on Disk 0 (Samsung 980) in strict UEFI/GPT mode.

AddRAM said:

Looks and sounds like you never installed W11 properly on Disk 0 (Samsung 980) in strict UEFI/GPT mode.

Click to expand...

You're probably right. There's one way to find out. @maarkr in disk management, right click on Disk 0, select Properties, then select the Volumes tab. This will show you the partition style of your Win 11 boot drive. As you can see here, my W11 boot drive (Disk 4) has the GPT partition style. Actually, all 5 of my drives are GPT.

Same here for my X299.

Just for info, in Disk Management select the view tab and hover over 'top' and select disk list. That will also show the Disk Partition style.

had to convert to GPT to install W11 months ago
D drive show NO paging file, HA!
If I select "auto..." it wants to put a 5Gb page file on C:

I never use a page file.

I booted it just to see what happens and now it boots to a screen giving me the option for Win 11 (default) or Win 10. Updated my Macrium image... now I do one every 3 mos. Takes an hour.