@Fernando - sorry for any confusion, NVME storage use is not wanted here, main booting OS was what the questions were about.
I am also unsure if he is on MBR partition, only guessing, but I guess the same question from me would be posed either way, MBR or GPT current SSD, how to install the NVME driver and then clone to avoid clean install?
I assume that would be easier if the partition is MBR now and MBR is the plan moving forward too, that's why I asked about MBR initially and assuming his current was MBR.

@Fernando - I agree, he hasn't said straight up no, but was trying to clone so you know that assumes trying to save hassle of re-install customize etc.
I also agree, it's the best thing to do, I do clean install often sometimes for no reason, keeps things running smoothly! Of course, I use updated WIM image each time, so no windows updates to install, and some of my usual apps already installed too.

Thank you for the guide link, hopefully he will do clean install, but in case he'd rather not hope he can follow along with your guide

Can you please clarify/answer my original question, which could still use your guide minus the partition switch.
Can you close MBR to MBR, never using UEFI/Secure Boot, and if yes, how do you insert the NVME driver into the OS pre-clone, or is that not necessary?

Ciao Lost ciao Fernando
OMG you know what happened? when we first put back the resistor we haven't pulled out the BIOS from the motherboard but we have done today (we anticipated as we were supposed to meet Friday). Look at the pictures...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z2pjn8s6vpjuxgg/IMG_2591.JPG?dl=0
Paltek basically removed the pond that was supposed to be on the motherboard under the BIOS's pin and so I guess when I used the clip I pressed the pin and being a very few pond around it, it lost the connection with the track. The guy told me he could put the pond back into the hole you can see in the picture however somehow he scratched the track and flexed the PIN toward the trackand then soldered. Now it is back to work :) See the pic https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yt30nkwj2dj2mk/IMG_2593.JPG?dl=0

Now it works but Windows is compromised I think. I'm working on the old SSD the one that is supposed to work. The BIOS recognize it however when I start windows I get a bluescreen error with a stopcode like this

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-troub...rors-windows-10

I tried to run the recovery from the USB (also trying with the new NVME SSD) but it says that Windows is blocked or not recognized (if I do diskpart with the old SSD, it says 0 OS). Not sure what happened but I need to investigate and try to make it work. I have used a recovery USB I created while Windows 10 was still working on the old SSD but I removed a partition for mistake :(
inside the USB I have--> Leo F: (the partition I have removed for mistake and renamed Leo - It's 124MB not so big, any idea of what that could have been?)
SONYSYS H: (259MB but used only 20MB on which I have EFI)
Windows RE tools I: (1.43GB where I have lots of language folders and the bootmgr, bootmgr.efi and recovery.txt)
Leo J: (212GB where I have all my files)
Recovery K: (24GB almost full where I have sources folder in which you can find some Sony stuff including install.wim in 13.8GB).

What Fernando said is that I should have no problem in cloning the old disk into the new one and then try to load windows 10?

Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #17

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@Lost_N_BIOS:
To be honest I cannot really understand users, who want to replace their old SATA connected system drive by a new NVMe one, but are not willing to do a fresh OS installation onto the NVMe SSD in UEFI mode. This is not only the easiest and safest way, but additionally a wonderful opportunity to get rid of all the garbage the user got installed during the past years. By the way: A fresh Win10 installation inclusive doing the personal settings usually takes not more than 10-15 minutes.
For users, who nevertheless want to transfer the data of their previously used OS partition onto their NVMe SSD, I have written >here< a short guide, but I repeat: A clean OS install in UEFI mode onto the NVMe SSD is the by far better solution.

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@Fernando - what I meant was clone a OS Install from MBR partitioned SSD to MBR partitioned NVME. So, are you saying, NVME cannot be booted at all in legacy mode / MBR partition, and must always be booted from GPT partition using UEFI / Secure Mode?
If yes, why is this that NVME can't boot legacy mode? Is the NVME module we insert EFI only? If yes, that's bad, we need a new one with merged EFI/Rom like GPU vBIOS

To your second comment, so before cloning the SSD to NVME using the method you linked, user should connect NVME as a secondary device, to allow Win10 to install the NVME driver within itself, so it's there in the cloned over copy?

I know clean install is best, and often will be much easier for most users, but this cloning is something we're asked often and since I don't have NVME device to test and sort all this kind of stuff out myself I have to ask questions and try to keep it all in order as to what is possible if desired and what isn't.
And many of my questions here were based on either situation, so I would know, could learn what's possible, how and why, not necessarily what the user was wanting to do as we'd not discussed it yet other than he did initially mention wanting to clone which i suggested against.

@leonmjj - So happy to see the board back to life again! You've been battling this one for a LONG TIME, all thanks to Paltek's terribly poor workmanship and dishonesty!

So, the first time you guys fixed it a week or so ago, you only put the resistor back in place that was missing, and never reflowed the BIOS solder?
Yes, the did terrible solder work on that chip, I was very concerned with the earlier images you showed me when it first happened that they maybe lifted a pad and then tried to set back into place or destroyed a pad and it was there with nothing under it.
Sounds like they did lift and destroy or remove a pad, if he had to extend the connection. Good man there, someone that knows how to solder can easily do such things! He gets from me, and I haven't even looked at your images yet - doing so now

Ohh!! Yes, I told you I thought maybe they damaged/ripped/burned out or lifted a pad, sure enough! Luckily you finally found someone that knows how to solder, Paltek would have told you the board needs replaced!
It's too bad you didn't end up in court with them, you should go ahead and send a link to all this to your lawyer, show her now you finally have clean and clear proof of some of the damage Paltek did and the repairs/hassles you had to go through to get it fixed.
Normally, in that hole, there is a "pad" that the legs/solder connect to, and that pad is connected to the trace/wire you see. They lifted that off due to too much heat for too long, too much pressure, not enough heat and forcing the chip off physically, etc any of those things can lift and remove the pad.
I suspected that from the looks of the poor solder work they did, it caught my eye on one of the leg positions as soon as you first showed me. I thought I had the images you sent before and where I edited and sent back to show you things, saved in your folder, but I guess they're lost to time (buried in PM's I'm sure)
I found some, on your original thread here, I see I was more worried about one of the outer pins, hard to tell what's what in images sometimes but good to see this one wasn't damaged too - Sony Vaio 13 Pro dead after wrong BIOS update

What is the code on the blue screen you get, last digits of last code you can see, if it's 7B, you simply need to set BIOS SATA mode back to whatever you have before.

If you removed some partition, before windows partition, that's probably the issue. I'm not sure if you can recreate that in place after it's been removed, maybe Fernando would be able to advise on that.
Yes on the 124MB, usually windows makes some 100MB or so partition, and if you have windows on GPT partition then it's probably UEFI/GPT partition stuff + Windows 100MB hidden partition.

What Fernando said about cloning only really applied if your system was in bootable working order.
I'd have to be there in person to inspect and try to fix things, it's hard to diagnose partitions and fix OS without looking at stuff in person, or lots of images of disk management, and you knowing how to use partition tools without a lot of guidance etc.
You may have no choice now but to do a clean install of windows, and then later connect your old drive as a secondary and copy over what you need.

Nice you finally got windows installed onto the NVME drive! There is no clone anything now, all you do is connect your old SSD as a spare and copy over what you need from it's folders (images, music, documents etc)
You will have to reinstall all your programs and stuff like that.

I wouldn't worry about that partition you lost, you said you didn't even know what was there, so nothing lost. But yes, it can be recovered if you've not written to this device, probably in tact too if you haven't written anymore data to it.
Google partition recovery tools, EaseUS makes a free one, but there is many others too. There's also lots of free data recovery tools that can find deleted files, but those would be recovered without their original names usually, in a huge mess, it's a pain to do that for something you don't even need.
Partition recovery is much easier though, if you've not written to the drive again, usually you can recover that in place and everything will go back to exactly as it was before.

Thanks for clarifying that for me @Fernando! So, we do need some combo NVME mod for our manual insertions!! Someone needs to get on this, whoever did the updates from v1, 2, 3 to 4 for the module we use now.
Do you think something like that is possible now, since this module we use has been out for a while and there is that Samsung one people could look at for ideas, methods?
Well thank you, now it's all very clear about that part! Still not sure on my second question though, but for now it doesn't matter since he's not cloning. - I see in your edit now, all clarified, thanks!

People still fighting all day long to make XP work on modern boards, so you know legacy booting will be around a while still.
It's too bad, I assumed maybe you know how to dump it, or had an update file from it, then maybe we could tinker

Extracting the Option ROM is possible and already was successfully performed, see Samsung NVMe legacy BOOT ROM present on 950 Pro.

@Ethaniel - thanks, I just tagged Fernando over to your thread about this Hope he can do some tests when he has a little free time to play.
So, what's the dumbed down summary of what you mentioned above, this is a "functional" fix, but pointless as it wont work with most NVME?

Zitat von Lost_N_BIOS im Beitrag #21

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@leonmjj - So happy to see the board back to life again! You've been battling this one for a LONG TIME, all thanks to Paltek's terribly poor workmanship and dishonesty!

So, the first time you guys fixed it a week or so ago, you only put the resistor back in place that was missing, and never reflowed the BIOS solder?
Yes, the did terrible solder work on that chip, I was very concerned with the earlier images you showed me when it first happened that they maybe lifted a pad and then tried to set back into place or destroyed a pad and it was there with nothing under it.
Sounds like they did lift and destroy or remove a pad, if he had to extend the connection. Good man there, someone that knows how to solder can easily do such things! He gets from me, and I haven't even looked at your images yet - doing so now

Ohh!! Yes, I told you I thought maybe they damaged/ripped/burned out or lifted a pad, sure enough! Luckily you finally found someone that knows how to solder, Paltek would have told you the board needs replaced!
It's too bad you didn't end up in court with them, you should go ahead and send a link to all this to your lawyer, show her now you finally have clean and clear proof of some of the damage Paltek did and the repairs/hassles you had to go through to get it fixed.
Normally, in that hole, there is a "pad" that the legs/solder connect to, and that pad is connected to the trace/wire you see. They lifted that off due to too much heat for too long, too much pressure, not enough heat and forcing the chip off physically, etc any of those things can lift and remove the pad.
I suspected that from the looks of the poor solder work they did, it caught my eye on one of the leg positions as soon as you first showed me. I thought I had the images you sent before and where I edited and sent back to show you things, saved in your folder, but I guess they're lost to time (buried in PM's I'm sure)
I found some, on your original thread here, I see I was more worried about one of the outer pins, hard to tell what's what in images sometimes but good to see this one wasn't damaged too - Sony Vaio 13 Pro dead after wrong BIOS update

What is the code on the blue screen you get, last digits of last code you can see, if it's 7B, you simply need to set BIOS SATA mode back to whatever you have before.

If you removed some partition, before windows partition, that's probably the issue. I'm not sure if you can recreate that in place after it's been removed, maybe Fernando would be able to advise on that.
Yes on the 124MB, usually windows makes some 100MB or so partition, and if you have windows on GPT partition then it's probably UEFI/GPT partition stuff + Windows 100MB hidden partition.

What Fernando said about cloning only really applied if your system was in bootable working order.
I'd have to be there in person to inspect and try to fix things, it's hard to diagnose partitions and fix OS without looking at stuff in person, or lots of images of disk management, and you knowing how to use partition tools without a lot of guidance etc.
You may have no choice now but to do a clean install of windows, and then later connect your old drive as a secondary and copy over what you need.

Nice you finally got windows installed onto the NVME drive! There is no clone anything now, all you do is connect your old SSD as a spare and copy over what you need from it's folders (images, music, documents etc)
You will have to reinstall all your programs and stuff like that.

I wouldn't worry about that partition you lost, you said you didn't even know what was there, so nothing lost. But yes, it can be recovered if you've not written to this device, probably in tact too if you haven't written anymore data to it.
Google partition recovery tools, EaseUS makes a free one, but there is many others too. There's also lots of free data recovery tools that can find deleted files, but those would be recovered without their original names usually, in a huge mess, it's a pain to do that for something you don't even need.
Partition recovery is much easier though, if you've not written to the drive again, usually you can recover that in place and everything will go back to exactly as it was before.

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@Lost_N_BIOS: Samsung 950 Pro Option ROM was successfully extracted, but it wasn't really tested with other NVMe devices.

@leonmjj - Yes, it's been a long time, happy to see it alive. And yes, I assumed you would have purchased another by now, I know you were eyeballing some of the new lightweight ones a while back when we discussed.

For partition recover, scan for lost partitions and then recover in place once they are done. I think I explained this is more detail to you in a PM.
If you want to just get stuff out of there, go into Partition #5 (This is your original C drive windows ran from). All your documents, images, music, stuff on your desktop etc will be in there.

#Ethanial - thanks for reply. Now, I wonder on your other thread, if that user that tested with G31 board what NVME he used, will have to look into that and ask him if he didn't mention.