Acer Nitro AN515-55 won't boot when NVME M.2 installed

albinotron

I recently purchased a 4TB NVME M.2 (PCIe 4.0 x 4) drive to upgrade my storage. I already had a 1TB SATA M.2 that came with the laptop.

When I installed the drive Windows 11 would not boot load. The computer just kept restarting after the Acer logo.

I opened the BIOS and noticed the new drive was in the HDD0 slot and the old drive with the Windows 11 install was HDD1.

I figured I would just reinstall Windows with a USB I created using a Windows 10 iso (I had an old license for 10 and prefer it), so I used Rufus to create a bootable USB that was compatible with UEFI, since that's the only way to boot with this motherboard. I got stuck in the boot loop again, with it the computer constantly restarting itself after trying to boot the USB.

I'm thinking maybe the chipset drivers are out of date, but I'm totally lost at this point on what to do.

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/694616/acer-nitro-an515-55-wont-boot-when-nvme-m-2-installed

This laptop has 2x M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4 slots it has to be a PCIe 3x4 SSD, 4TB is suggested by Crucial but I haven't seen anyone using that size, M.2 SSDs, up to 1TB is the maximum recommended by Acer. M.2 Gen4 SSDs normally run OK in Gen 3 slots but in your case with the 4TB size I am not so sure.

AnhEZ28

@albinotron

Try to go into the BIOS, Main tab, and press CTRL + S to reveal SATA mode. Change it to AHCI.

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/694616/acer-nitro-an515-55-wont-boot-when-nvme-m-2-installed

A 4TB M.2 SSD drive might NOT be compatible with the Nitro AN515-55, so be aware of that also. Did you do a clone of the 1TB oem Win-11 OS first and tried the 4TB as a boot drive to see if the laptop boots from a 4TB M.2 SSD cloned drive? As that is what you should do first.

If you prefer Win-10 and you want to try the 4TB M.2 SSD with a Clean Install, then and when you do a clean install of windows on these laptop and you add a new M.2 drive, you need to have the unzipped and the appropriate AN515-55s Intel "IRST (Intel® Rapid Storage Technology) Driver version 17.9.1.1009" driver on the Rufus Win-10 bootable USB, so that when you get to the section of the Win-10 installation where it asks "Where do you want to install Windows?" and you don't see the new 4TB M.2 SSD drive, you need to click on "Load driver" and install the IRST driver so that the 4TB new M,2 SSD boot drive is recognized, if its not, then the 4TB M.2 SSD is not compatible with the AN515-55, and you need to use the oem 1TB or a max 2TB boot drive. Make sure that you have BIOS Version 2.06 and Firmware Version v101a to improve performance of the laptop and VGA VBIOS. Good luck and let us know how you went with this 4TB M.2 SSD, as its good information for other community members.

eGomes

In addition to following our colleagues tips, don't forget also to convert the unit to GPT.