Thank you for the welcome!

But the bad news makes me sad. Thank you for the response, really appreciated.

So to update you on everything that has transpired in the last few weeks.

Learned that the p8p67 has a glitch that only allows it to detect 3 ram Dimm's when the PCIE SSD P3500 intel drive is connected. I was able to boot to the drive with a modified bios (posted in the modded bios section) without the 4th dimm removed, by modifying the bios and removing the TCG TPM modules from the bios.

I noticed the P8P67 LE had 2 newer bios updates, and while I tried to find the difference I just don't have the experience at looking at something like that, I decided after mulling over the specs of the board that they where close enough and I may loose a feature here or so but overall it should work. Well I was wrong, I failed to see that there was more phases for the power and basically flashing the LE bios on the normal P8p67 bricked the machine. While in the process of ordering a new bios chip and SPI USB programmer I some how bent some pins and bricked the board totally.

Moving forward I found a Z77a-G41 MSI board used, and unfortunately, it has the same issue with the ram but worse. Only one DIMM will be recognized, and the memory settings will not be saved as every time you boot it thinks the memory settings have changed. I still opted to try a modified bios on this to see if I could boot to the NVME drive with only one ram dimm installed and I am successful and typing to you on this machine now. MSI flatly refuses to give any support to me on this board since it's EOL and out of warranty. I'm now debating upgrading to Skylake, but honestly 600$ for a marginal speed bump in both HDD and CPU does not seem worth it to me yet. I'd rather sink the money in to 1070GTX and pocket the extra 200 as I think i'll gain more there than updating the CPU.

Just a quick question regarding the Steps outlined in the original post here:

There are two 'NVMeExpressDxE' files available for download.. a 'NVMeExpressDxE.rar' one and a 'NvmeExpressDxE_compressed.rar' one, however the Step '3. Insertion of the NVMe module' states in 3c) to enable/check the 'Insert Compressed' option.

Does this step '3c / Insert Compressed' apply always and for both files, or only for the 'NvmeExpressDxE_compressed.rar' one - and maybe more importantly, how would I decide which one of the two files to choose from and use (i.e. - how would I find out if my bios has 'limited space')?

Cheers and thanks (especially to you Dieter!),
-Joerg

Ahh I see - thanks! I'll give this a try (in my case it's for the ASUS P9X79-E WS) and report if / how it works ..

Hi, I am struggling for 1 week already to add a Samsung 950 Pro 512GB to my (old) system - Asus P9X79 Deluxe running BIOS 4801. The nvme module sits via a PCI-E 4X adapter in one of the PCI-E x16 slots. I've been doing a lot of reading these days on this topic, but still it seems that I am missing something and I cannot get it working.

What I did so far:
-upgraded to the official BIOS 4801,
-prepared the modded BIOS 4801 with the file mentioned in the initial post.
-I used the flashback procedure to install the modded BIOS; it took about 10 minutes of blue light flashing, I have no idea if the operation was successful or not.
Till this point the Samsung 950Pro was not visible in the BIOS, nor in the Boot section of the BIOS, neither in the Win 7 SP1 system (+the nvme hotfix from microsoft).

At this stage, I have the Win 7 OS drive and the Samsung 950 Pro connected to my system. I am trying to install Win 10 on the NVME, but:
-the BIOS shows the NVME as a boot device when the Win 7 drive is also connected to the system (it is displayed in the Boot override section as: N1-Samsung SSD 950 PRO 512 GB)
-if I remove the Win 7 drive, the NVME is not visible anymore as boot device
-if I connect the Win 10 bootable USB, the NVME is not shown anymore in BIOS
-I prepared a Win 10 UEFI USB drive, but the Win 10 installer cannot see the NVME drive during installation. I copied the Samsung NVME driver and pointed the installer to it but the drive is not found.

Thanks for reading the long story and for maintaining this forum :)...is there any advice that you can offer?

Thank you for answering, yes, the blue light was always flashing (alternating in high and low frequency) before stopping.
I am attaching a resized screen picture. It is listed as "N1" - maybe it is seen as a network location.

It is shown like this when another non UEFI drive is connected to the system.
When I connect the UEFI USB with Win 10, it is not shown anymore.

Also... when I change the CSM settings for UEFI, the drive is not shown, whereas if I change everything to legacy, it is shown.

Hi Fernando,

So giving up on the MSI z77a-G41 board, I ended up getting a ASrock Z77 Extreme 4 which works 100% no issues at all. I gotta give credit where it's due and ASRock, BIOS is pretty awesome, it even shows the device that it detects in the BIOS.

Not only did the board detect the drive right but I just noticed they even have their own BETA bios which allows for booting on NVME drives. I however, used your method to modify my BIOS and i'm booting to Windows on my P3500 as I always wanted in the first place without having to spend 600$ on a skylake setup which really wouldn't be much faster than what I have. Best part is I got the board for 80$ used, my next board will certainly be a ASRock.

Did not try this but here's the link for the ASRock beta BIOS
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%20Ext...ex.asp?cat=Beta


BTW I also uploaded all 3 modified bios's to the pre-modded section one for the ASUS P8P67, MSI Z77A-G41, ASRock Z77 Extreme 4

Again thanks for everything Ferando!

Hello Fernando,
i have a MB GA-X99 Ultra Gaming with BIOS version F4. CPU is E5-1650 v4. SSD is SM951 MZVPV256HDGL (NVM Version). I was trying to install W7 Ultimate, but instal can not find SSD. I open with AMITool 5007 my BIOS and i can not find CSMCORE modul. I have add a NvmeExpressDxE from your post and flash the BIOS. But it no help. Must i install CSMCORE modul from another BIOS? Have you any idee?
Thank you

Hello Fernando.
Thank you for quick answer.
W10 i can easy install to ssd, but i need W7.
I have ask gigabyte support yet:

Question:
"Hello,
i have M2 SSD Samsung SSD SM951-NVMe 256GB, M.2 (MZVPV256HDGL-00000). It is supported in liste. I am trying to install Win 7 ultimate. But my hard drive is not appeared in the liste. How must i update the BIOS? Can you sent me a BIOS version to support of installing W7 on the M2 PCI-E SSD?
Thank you"

Answer:
"Sehr geehrter Herr ......,

Vielen Dank für Ihre Anfrage.

Wir freuen uns über Ihr Interesse an Produkten von GIGABYTE

Windows 7 benötigt den Treiber zur M.2 vom Hersteller, da Windows 7 sonst nicht auf einer PCIe SSD installiert werden.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Ihr GIGABYTE-Team"

In my old system (X58) Grub4dos load VHD image in ram-disk und starts Windows in ram.
But this load was to slow.
Thats why i build a new system (X99) with M2 NVM SSD.
So i will search further and hope i find any decision for my problem.

Thank you