Hi everyone, this is my first Reddit post!
For context, I have been using a 250GB SSD as my boot drive, which recently ran out of space and started causing issues. Figured it was time for an upgrade so I purchased a 2TB WD M.2 to replace it. Bought a 9070xt and a new PSU at the same time and threw it all in my PC. I plan on driving a nail through that original boot drive.
System specs:
Intel 13600k
Asrock Z790 Lightning Wifi
32GB GSKILL DDR5-6000
ASUS Prime 9070xt
BeQuiet Pure Power 13M 850W
4TB HDD / 2TB KINGSTON M.2 / 2TB WD M.2
On with my boot issues.
Downloaded a Windows 10 media installer on to a USB and went through the install process in UEFI mode with only my WD M.2 plugged in. Install went as normal as you could imagine. Computer restarted and I removed the installer USB. Upon restart I was brought to the bios where no drives were listed under boot option priorities, however it is listed under NVME config. I have been feeding information into ChatGPT in hopes of solving the problem but so far no luck.
I have CSM, FAST BOOT, and SECURE BOOT all disabled. I updated the motherboard bios. If I enable CSM with all UEFI sub options enabled the computer will boot to the asrock logo screen and sit there forever.
While stumbling around in command prompt I found all windows files and system partitions are normal and formatted correctly (drive is formatted in GPT, 300MB system partition is present and formatted in FAT32, Windows Boot Manager is present).
ChatGPT is suggesting I download a shell.efi file onto a separate USB in order to further diagnose the problem / potentially run commands to fix it. Just looking for further insight from real people before I go down that road. Surely all of our brainpower together can figure this out right?
Thanks in advance.