Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

[Tinfomais]

Hi, no matter what I do, I can't get any SSD to be detected, and I've tried 4 diferent SSDs (Micron, Kingston, Kioxia and Transcend), but it detects HDDs the first try.
Here's what I've tried:
-Update BIOS from easy flash
-Reflash BIOS with programmer
-Reflash EC firmware and flashed back original
-Cleaned entire motherboard
-Unplugged everything except SSD and monitor
-Tried With battery only and Charger only
-Clear cmos
-Using optical drive sata
Ran out of ideas, can anyone help or give me a tip on what I should try next?
Thanks in advance.

[mcplslg123]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

tried in legacy mode??

[Tinfomais]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

Yes, forgot to mention that, Tried UEFI and CSM (Legacy mode) and with secure boot on and off.

[mosfetratus]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

nvme ssds can be detected only with UEFI bios setting. They can be detected with legacy OS booted (W7), but bios will not detect as bootable device.

Secure boot is only for booting trusted software, from HDD, CD, etc.

Also what partition GDP or MBR, hdd are formated in? MBR is legacy.

[Tinfomais]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

The laptop came with a Micron 256GB SSD from factory and it suddenly stopped detecting the SSD, it's formated from factory with GPT partition table and windows 10, but the problem shouldn't be the file system nor the partition table because I've worked with other laptops with the same and similar models and it didn't have any problems detecting SSD.
And just some aditional information, only Sata SSDs, the laptop doesn't have NVMe support.

[mcplslg123]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

are you using the ssd on optical drive bay?? If so,the ssd candy can be the issue.

[Tinfomais]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

Yes and no, I've tried with a known working caddy and in the hdd bay with the same result.

[mcplslg123]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

Ok, so the caddy is fine,ssd is known good. You need to measure the voltage on hdd connector.

[Tinfomais]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

3.3V have 3.28v and 5v have 5.04v all within spec.
This souldn't be the problem as it detects everything (HDDs and optical drive) except SSDs.

Edit: tested the wrong laptop (I have another one with a similar model by its side), 3.3v shows 0v without SSD and 1.78v with SSD and 5v is 5.04v, so the problem is probably between the 3.3v voltage regulator and the sata conector, if not the regulator itself.

Thanks

[Tinfomais]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

I've just disassembled the motherboard and upon closer inspection on the daughter board, there are no 3.3v traces, only 5v, and according to the boardview the laptop only has 5v on both sata connectors.

[Tinfomais]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

Update: Ok, this might be weird, but it started detecting SSDs out of nowhere, and it's booting to windows without any problem.
Rebooted many times, and removed battery and it's still detecting the SSD, Asus should learn to make these cheaper laptops more reliable, because from the hundreds of laptops I've fixed until today, I've never seen this happening. Thanks for the help anyway.

[piernov]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

This one seems to have a different connector, but on other Asus laptops the mezzanine connector for the HDD daughter board is a common failure.

[ktmmotocross]

Re: Asus A541UV won't detect SSDs. HELP?

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