Asus N56VZ-S4215H won't accept SSD

Hi Guys,

Bought an N56VZ today (in the Netherlands).

I succesfully upgraded the memory to 8 GByte, it's working fine. However, on changing out the HDD to an SSD the laptop won't boot. At all. It boots into the bios. If you save settings and reboot it again boots into bios. Changing bios settings (secure boot, etc) makes no difference.

I tried both an empty SSD (intel 520) and a full one with an OS (some old crucial one). Having a bootable CD in the drive makes no difference whatsoever.

The laptop is one of those delivered with W8 as default.

I'd love to be able to boot from an SSD, but this is driving me nuts. Any clues? I'm looking into the UEFI stuff atm, but that doesn't seem to be the issue... or is it?

Spent some more time with it. Seems it's impossible to boot from anything other then the main drive. Universal boot cd or windows 7 installation DVD isn't detected.

This is driving me insane. Starting to considering just returning the thing.

 

I keep hearing about this with UEFI. Have you tried disabling UEFI? Or loaded optimal defaults? Sometimes incorrect time zone settings will cause malfunction too. And have you tested the drive(s) in another machine?

This isn't a first, and it's becoming a problem since Windows 8 for a lot of users. Try another boot media, or a different disc, and keep us posted on your findings.

 

Well I got it to boot.

The UEFI is the issue. You need to turn off secured boot and turn on csm boot. The you can access the ssd.

However, it is NOT possible to install a clean windows 8. I am installing 7 now, for the 2nd time. First time the drivers wouldnt install cleanly.

I guess I'll look into cloning the drive on the ssd. I don't want to lose the capability to use win8 eventually....

 

And after another day.

Cloning the HDD to SSD proves to be difficult. I managed to clone it, but kept getting booting errors.

Windows 7 is now running fine on the laptop. But... I can't seem to activate it.

Q: what version is delivered with the N56VZ? Home or Professional?

 

I hereby confirm that following setup runs smooth after investing some hours:
N56VZ-S4215H
Corsair Vengeance 16GB CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
Windows 8 64bit Pro (although it comes with Windows 8, I wanted Pro)

When I replaced the HDD for SSD it started up in bios.
I disabled the secure boot and enabled CSM (this will give you more options to boot from).
Then installed Windows 7 64bit Pro.
Did an upgrade to Windows 8 64bit Pro (from inside Windows 7/do not do a clean install if you have bought the upgrade key). Make sure it's activated.
Enable the secure boot and disable the CSM.
Install the drivers from Asus DVD.

I hope this works for other people. Good luck.

 

All jokes aside, thanks for this information. I hope you read this someday and realise that a community like this IS all about contributors like.