Bios won't acknowledge SSD

[Tahuhali]

Replacing hard drive in an All-in-one PC. The HDD crashed and replacing it with a brand new SSD. I hooked it up to my desktop fist to install Windows 10 and put the recovered files on it. I booted from it about 5 times, so I know the drive itself works fine. The bios on the All-in-one won't acknowledge that the SSD is plugged in and just says there is no OS found to boot from. I made sure the boot order has the the SATA port on it, even tried making it first. Also made sure the SATA setting it set to AHCI. There is only one SATA cable in the All-in-one setup, so there is no other port to test.
So what is the next step is should take?

 

[carnageX]

So...you put the SSD in another system, installed Win10 from there, then put it in the AIO, and now trying to boot off of it, is that right?

 

[Tahuhali]

Correct, and it won't boot because it doesn't see the SSD.

 

[carnageX]

Guarantee it won't work anyway. Even if it did recognize the SSD, the hardware profile is different, and it would most likely BSOD...and the activation will be different as well. Unless you have a key for Win10... If this was part of the free upgrade from Win7 or Win8.1...then that copy of Win10 is now tied to the desktop you used to install Win10 on the SSD.

Is there a reason you didn't just install the SSD into the AIO to begin with and install from there? Or is the AIO not recognizing the SSD the reason you did it the way you did?

 

[Tahuhali]

I do have a key, I got the key from the original install that was an upgrade from Windows 7. I used the desktop to install Windows 10 because it was more convenient really, I didn't think it would have any effect on it working when I returned it to the original system. If I wipe the SSD and install it all over again on the All-in-one, would it work then? I don't see how that would influence whether or not the BIOS would see the SSD or not.

 

[carnageX]

I do have a key, I got the key from the original install that was an upgrade from Windows 7.

What key? Was the upgarde from Win7->Win10 already done on the AIO? If so, then you're still ok activation-wise.

BTW, the key from the Win10 upgrade is irrelevent - the activation is stored on MS servers as a hardware hash. The key returned is generic and can't be used to actually activate. The only time keys are relevent with Win10 now is if you purchased Win10 (OEM or Retail) and received an actual Win10 key that way.

I used the desktop to install Windows 10 because it was more convenient really, I didn't think it would have any effect on it working when I returned it to the original system. If I wipe the SSD and install it all over again on the All-in-one, would it work then? I don't see how that would influence whether or not the BIOS would see the SSD or not.

Does BIOS recognize the SSD at all, as a boot entry in the boot selection menu? If not, then there's other issues other than installing it from another system.

 

[Tahuhali]

The answer to the first question is yes. So I should be okay activation-wise.
Second question, no. It doesn't recodnise it as a boot entry.
So what other potential issues might be the problem?