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Hey gerbils. My PC has a Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD and it's been acting a bit strange lately. Instead of displaying the 'Starting Windows' animation screen when booting up after turning on, Windows would launch the recovery screen. My first suspicion was this is a problem with the SSD. But if the SSD is the problem then I should be having lots of other problems left and right and not just when restarting, right? So is this a problem with the OS or a problem with the SSD? I got this SSD 26 days ago. Since I can't flash the SSD's firmware within Windows because Samsung Magician seems to dislike the AMD AHCI drivers, I might have to reformat the SSD first, install WIn7, run Magician to flash the firmware, then install the AMD AHCI drivers. I don't know why AMD's AHCi drivers are STILL having issues in this day and age. I'm inclined to return the SSD to the store but I'm not exactly free to do so these days so I'm hoping the latest firmware will fix it, if it IS the problem in the first place.

Ok, I think I've nailed it. PC won't POST all of a sudden when I restarted because of the blue screen. Unhooked all SATA devices, still no POST. When plugged, the DVD drive would go crazy. Took out the video card and RAM and both work fine on another PC. Unfortunately I don't have a spare AM3+ board to test the FX CPU with. However, the Phenom II from the spare PC won't POST with the 990FX board either. So all signs point to a faulty motherboard (I bought it 13 months ago so the warranty recently expired). I need to test the FX CPU on another AM3+ board though, to make sure it's just fine. I hope my SSD and HDD weren't affected at all by the 990FX board as well and both are ok in the first place. Guess I have to do major surgery and replace my mobo.

ronch wrote:

Since I can't flash the SSD's firmware within Windows because Samsung Magician seems to dislike the AMD AHCI drivers, I might have to reformat the SSD first, install WIn7, run Magician to flash the firmware, then install the AMD AHCI drivers. I don't know why AMD's AHCi drivers are STILL having issues in this day and age.

Samsung SSD's do not recognize the Marvell SATA controller.
I found this out after the fact.
So even though I have AHCI enabled in BIOS I'm presented with this:



If your mobo did indeed take a dump, I'd look for a board without Marvell.
Or at the very least consider a PCIe SATA controller card.
I added one and now am presented with this:



Also if you can find Samsung Magician v4.1 you can check firmware with that.

Hey there, IAmaGhostDog..

Thanks for the extensive reply and screenshots. Actually, when I was having this problem I was still using an MSI 990FXA-GD65 motherboard. When the problems started to occur I immediately suspected the SSD to be the one causing it since it's the newest device in the system. A few days or a week or so later the PC just refused to start. I nailed it down to the motherboard, which was apparently dying. At that time my Hitachi HDD was also having some weird T.E.C. deadline. After replacing the board with the one on my signature below the problems with the SSD and HDD went away. And by the way, with the MSI board, all SATA devices were hooked up to the south bridge SATA ports. Not even sure the MSI board had any auxiliary SATA ports from Marvell or whoever else. Too lazy to check again, haha.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, bro.