Samsung 960 EVO NVMe in Aspire V5-951G-726Z

Aquamoth
Aquamoth Member Posts: 6 New User
edited March 2023 in 2017 Archives

I installed a Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2 card in my Acer Aspire V5-951G-726Z.

The drive turns up in the windows disk manager but when I try to initialize it it says "Illegal function call". A rescan then removes the drive from the index. (Also, connection to the Virtual Disk Service takes a really long time...)

 

Does anyone have a suggestion how to get the drive operational, or at least how to get better diagnostics?

 

Before asking here I have:
* Installed Windows 10 Pro Creators Update (version 1703.15063.296). 

* Updated Acer BIOS to V1.14 and asserted the samsung drive shows up inside BIOS.

* GPT partitioned the original hybrid drive and set Acer BIOS to UEFI with secure boot.

* Installed the Samsung_NVM_Express_Driver_22


Confirmation of PCIe x4Confirmation of PCIe x4I then asked for compatibility in an old similar thread and got an awesome reply from brummyfan2, where he said there was support if I have a PCIe x2 or x4 slot.

 

I ran the suggested HWINFO64 and can confirm x4 support. (Screenshot included)

 

I'm pretty much at roads end now. I guess I havn't tried just reinstalling Windows 10 directly on the NVMe-drive and see what happens, but I'd rather see that it works first and then clone the boot partition to the new drive...

 

Anyone?

 

Best Answer

  • Aquamoth
    Aquamoth Member Posts: 6 New User
    Answer ✓

    Since I couldn't initialize the SSD I was unable to clone it too. However, I removed the hybrid disk and installed Windows 10 onto the SSD from scratch as suggested.

     

    I can now confirm that Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe 250gb works fine on an Acer Aspire V5-591G-726Z with the Core i7-6700HQ cpu.

     

    It's sad I had to install Windows 10 Pro Creators Update from scratch - and all software I need, but now it is all working and the hybrid is reattached as a media disk, just like I wanted it.

     

    Thanks for your support, brummyfan2!

     

    PS. I should also confirm for any future reader that my working setup has NO 3rd party drivers installed. When I installed Acers NVidia driver I was getting BSOD in qcamain10x64.sys - which is the wifi-chip that is also on the pcie-bus. Removing the wifi-chip didn't help, but rolling back the nvidia driver did the trick! I bet this is a problem with Creators Update and drivers though since more people seem to have those problems.

Answers

  • brummyfan2
    brummyfan2 ACE Posts: 28,077 Trailblazer

    Hi,

    It's me again, let us go through the  process, do you still have the original HDD with OS installed in the laptop? Did you clone the entire drive or only the OS? 

    What happens when you remove the original HDD and try to boot?

    Could you please try the following:

    1. Download and install Partition Mini tool Free:https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

    2. Migrate the whole contents of  your HDD to Samsung SSD.

    3.Remove the HDD from laptop and reboot.

    You don't need to install Samsung NVMe driver, Windows will install it's driver, if you prefer Samsung's driver, you can install it latter on.

     

  • Aquamoth
    Aquamoth Member Posts: 6 New User
    Answer ✓

    Since I couldn't initialize the SSD I was unable to clone it too. However, I removed the hybrid disk and installed Windows 10 onto the SSD from scratch as suggested.

     

    I can now confirm that Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe 250gb works fine on an Acer Aspire V5-591G-726Z with the Core i7-6700HQ cpu.

     

    It's sad I had to install Windows 10 Pro Creators Update from scratch - and all software I need, but now it is all working and the hybrid is reattached as a media disk, just like I wanted it.

     

    Thanks for your support, brummyfan2!

     

    PS. I should also confirm for any future reader that my working setup has NO 3rd party drivers installed. When I installed Acers NVidia driver I was getting BSOD in qcamain10x64.sys - which is the wifi-chip that is also on the pcie-bus. Removing the wifi-chip didn't help, but rolling back the nvidia driver did the trick! I bet this is a problem with Creators Update and drivers though since more people seem to have those problems.

  • brummyfan2
    brummyfan2 ACE Posts: 28,077 Trailblazer

    Hi,

    You are welcome and glad you got it sortedSmiley Very Happy

  • akuhun
    akuhun Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer

    Had you did benchmarks? If you did Can you upload the results?

  • Aquamoth
    Aquamoth Member Posts: 6 New User

    Here is a HD Tune read test of the Samsung 960 EVO. 

     

    I'm also including a read test of a very fast Voyager usb 3 thumbdrive for comparison. As you can see the EVO is over 4x faster.

     

    HDTune_Benchmark_NVMe____Samsung_SSD_960.png

    HDTune_Benchmark_Corsair_Voyager_3.0.png

  • akuhun
    akuhun Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer

    How old is this SSD? Are you satisfied?

  • Aquamoth
    Aquamoth Member Posts: 6 New User

    I bought it three weeks ago (beginning of may 2017) as you can see on when I started the thread.

     

    I'm not at all impressed that I had to reinstall Windows 10 Creators Update to access the drive, but once I passed that hassle it's the fastest thing I've seen ever, and I can still use the original hybrid drive for data storage.

     

    I should warn you though that installing the nvidia drivers for the Geforce GTX 950m graphics card bluescreens the computer, so I can't play any games on this rig for now. I see many more have issues with nvidia and Creators Update so I hope it's "just" a bug that nvidia will soon fix.

  • akuhun
    akuhun Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer

    Hi.
    Maybe someday I buy one of this ssd. But it seems slower to me. (Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZxum8OB3M&feature=youtu.be)
    Can you send me a picture of crystaldiskinfo? (Transfer Mode)

  • alittahu
    alittahu Member Posts: 20 New User

    I'm having the same problem, what u had back then. If I install the nVidia driver i got a bsod. What do u mean by rolling back? Which version do u use?

  • akuhun
    akuhun Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer

    Rolling back is mean downgrade. Do you have a 960 EVO? If you have. Can you send me a picture of crystaldiskinfo? (Transfer Mode)

  • alittahu
    alittahu Member Posts: 20 New User

    Yes I have an 960 EVO. I will do a test on it and then send the pictures. But I still don't get it what does downgrading means. Downgrading the firmware? Or downgrading from SSD to HDD, so the HDD contains the system files? I know, I might sound silly, but I really do not know that.

  • akuhun
    akuhun Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer

    Downgrading mean he use older GeForce driver.

  • akuhun
    akuhun Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer

    Can you send me a picture of crystaldiskinfo? (Transfer Mode) I think you can improve your system speed. But is have to see that menü.

  • akuhun
    akuhun Member Posts: 8

    Tinkerer

    Everybody forget send me the picture?

  • tukanov
    tukanov Member Posts: 1 New User

    I am also a victim. I can not judge whether it is from the drivers of Nvidia or the motherboard of acer aspire v5-591g. By stopping the nvidia 950m card from the device manager the machine works steadily. With the nvidia driver turned on, blue screens appear with qcamain10x64.sys and CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED.


    Before asking here I have:
    * Installed Windows 10 Pro Creators Update (version 1703.15063.296).
    * Updated Acer BIOS to V1.14 and asserted the samsung drive shows up inside the BIOS.
    * GPT partitioned the original hybrid drive and set Acer BIOS to UEFI with secure boot.
    * nvidia drivers test with : windows drivers, last nvidia 385.41 - WHQL, and acer support site original drivers VGA_nVidia_10.18.13.5384_W10x64_A 
    * Installed the Samsung_NVM_Express_Driver_2blue screen hwinfo.png
  • gus_gour
    gus_gour Member Posts: 2 New User
    guys I am experiencing a similar issue. After formatting and reinstalling the windows on a samsung m.2 960 evo in my acer aspire v5-591g laptop, I get a blue screen. As I have seen, it has to do with the NVIDIA 950m graphics card, as installing its drivers from the nvidia site causes a blue screen.  

    Does anyone have any idea on how to solve this issue? Is this specific ssd compatible with this laptop?
  • gus_gour said:
    guys I am experiencing a similar issue. After formatting and reinstalling the windows on a samsung m.2 960 evo in my acer aspire v5-591g laptop, I get a blue screen. As I have seen, it has to do with the NVIDIA 950m graphics card, as installing its drivers from the nvidia site causes a blue screen.  

    Does anyone have any idea on how to solve this issue? Is this specific ssd compatible with this laptop?

    Hi,
    If you have NVIDIA driver installed, roll back to previous driver, if that doesn't help, you can use MiniTool partition wizard to migrate, do you still have the original OS in a HDD?
  • gus_gour
    gus_gour Member Posts: 2 New User
    Thanks for the reply! 

    The older drivers did not work, but i'll try the migration. No the original OS is in the ssd. I formatted the laptop, and installed the OS on the ssd directly. My HDD is supposed to serve as a secondary disc. 
  • gus_gour said:
    Thanks for the reply! 

    The older drivers did not work, but i'll try the migration. No the original OS is in the ssd. I formatted the laptop, and installed the OS on the ssd directly. My HDD is supposed to serve as a secondary disc. 

    Hi,
    If you don't have the original OS saved in another HDD, you could do a clean install in the NVMe SSD.
    https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-clean-install-windows-10-a.html