I just got a new m4 128gb. As with most people who just got an ssd, speed difference is incredible, etc etc. Anyway, after installing windows the pc restarted as expected and then I just had a blinking cursor on boot up, before windows loaded, this went on long enough for me to think that the install had gone wrong, so I reinstalled. The same thing happened again but I managed to be patient enough and it carried on booting up into windows. After updates and (many) restarts it seems that this problem often occurs on warm restarts. If the pc is shut-down and is left for a short time it starts up normally and boots straight into windows. After some brief research I found this issue could be caused by incorrect boot order. However, I have checked this several times and it is correct. I also ran a windows repair check off the disk to see if this was a cause, I had found mention of this too, but it found no problems. I know warm restarts don't happen often once everything is set up but any ideas would be useful. The ssd has the latest firmware and the bios is up to date. The ssd is connected to one of the marvell 6gbs port of my ga-p55a-ud3 and the rest of my system is as below.
Did you have any other drives connected during the install? Windows sometimes will put the boot files on other drives which is a likely scenario for your issue. If you did have other drives connected during install, disconnect them and rebuild the mbr and bcd with the recovery console on the install media to correct the issue.
Did you use the drivers for your motherboard from the Gigabyte website or let Windows 7 download them? With Marvel controllers some find it better to use what Windows 7 automatically downloads.
I did have some other drives attached, although they were unformatted but I will check that. I used the drivers from the Gigabyte website so I will also try that. Thanks guys. I have noticed one other thing, the ssd appears in the disconnect drive list (the plug and play list with the USB symbol). More of a point of interest than anything else. I set my monitors to turn off after a certain time rather than have a screensaver. Now when I move the mouse to bring them back on it happens much quicker.
Disconnect your other drives and try to boot. if you can't its put files on one of the other drives. If thats the problem it only takes a few minutes to fix with bcdedit in the recovery console. As for it showing up in eject menu, it's not really a problem and as blogins said it has to do with hot swap function. Some controller driver present it in a different manner. Now you can disable sata hotswap if its an option if you will never do so with any drives on that disk controller, though I would personally just ignore it and keep the option. It all has to do with the CM_DEVCAP_SURPRISEREMOVALOK in registry which i would edit instead if having it in the eject drives menu really bothers you.
I've tried both your ideas without success. Letting windows get its own drivers didn't seem to have any effect. As for the multiple drive theory, I unplugged everything else, even the dvd drives and it still booted into windows and upon a reset was still slow. I couldn't find an option to disable the hot swap feature, though I will go through the manual carefully. If not I will see how much it actually bothers me before looking in the registry. Thanks though guys.
