I figured it out, this is really strange.

This 17.9.0.1007 installer actually changed my motherboard's BIOS settings for NVME control. It changed my NVME devices to be under iRST control, so the Samsung NVME controller was no longer being detected. Reverted the BIOS setting and now my 960pro controller is back.

Very strange, I did not think an Intel installer could change my BIOS settings.

Also, I believe this is a DCH driver now, it installs a UWP intel storage mgmt application, the original one is gone.

All my Samsung NVMe SSDs are seen but now they are automatically handled by Intel v17.9.0.1007, why this ?
why Samsung NVMe drivers are now ignored ?

@Fernando,
The suggestion to reverse back manually to Samsung NVMe driver instead of Intel v17.9.0.1007 using the Device Manager, Storage Controllers Control panel can't work.
The device item is not offered !
How to do ?
Here are the screenshots, with a ANVIL test bench for SSD system 970PRO 512GB.

Yes, Samsung NVMe 970PRO is the system C: drive.
However, looking at the BIOS menu, advanced option, NVMe controller option I see NONE NVMe devices installed !!
It is crazy the BIOS contents has been modified by this W10 Intel piece of software !!

Regarding the performance, all the SAMSUNG NVMe drivers versions did offered BETTER performances in the past than this v17.9.0.1007 strange solution.
A set of ANVIL tests done in the past is attached.

@Fernando,
the proposed scenario does not work, the Restore previously used driver does come back to v17.7 and the Samsung NVMe device is definitively not offered.
Another restore previous from v17.7 goes back to v15.5, and always no longer Samsung device !!

Seems like the samsung nvme driver is the fastest. The speeds were way lower with iRST.

I didn't see a controller to rollback in my device manager, the only way to revert it for me was to reset the BIOS setting for nvme control.

@djc5166
Yes it does seem the only way to back to a clean and performante situation is to reset the BIOS settings for NVMe control control (for my ASUS Z390 motherboard).
This is totally crazy that iRST software does modify the BIOS settings !!
What is your motherboard model/manufacturer ?

Gigabyte z390 Aorus Master

these new drivers and software makes the same bug if you restart or shutdown you system with build raid0 setup with spinners through intel onboard sata controller. Issue is disks spins down when restart the pc and spin up immediately, which is annoying and not healthy to them. If you shutdown, disks tend to spin down first, then spin up immediately after that and then system shuts down completely. Tried so much different versions of intel drivers and software, no luck for fixing this problem. Also with different versions I also indicated that there is another problem, when idle in winOS, disks in raid massive tend to shut down/park themselves after a short period of time which is not connected to power plan of disk in any way. On amd ryzen system there were none of the above problems with same raid0 setup with spinners. It's all software problem which is not resolved at all.....

@Fernando I hope this post find you well. I need some your expertise again!
I have an ASUS P8CWS motherboard with an Intel E3-1290 V2 processor.
I am running Windows 10 1903.18863.900.
It has an Intel(R) 7 Series/C216 Chipset.
I am currently running 12.8.0.1016 version of Intel RST in AHCI mode. This is the last version provided by ASUS for this mb.
I am also planning a RAID installation.

Here are my questions:
1. Is there any benefit to moving to a newer version of Intel RST, such as v13.1.0.1058 for the RAID installation?
2. Is there any benefit to moving to a newer version if I stay in AHCI mode?
3. How does one tell the difference from the RST and the RST(e) drivers, once they are installed?

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for the information.