Cold start OK, reboot hangs on splash screen

The machine is MSI Titan GT80 running latest-greatest Win10.

The problem began after I installed an AHCI driver as I moved the machine from the RAID mode to AHCI mode in BIOS.
I undid the RAID configuration a while back but it stayed configured in the RAID mode and booted/rebooted with no issues.

The problem however, in the RAID mode, the machine would not detect one of my SSDs, because not having an active RAID and just the setting meant it defaulted to the IDE mode as far as I understand which is inferior to the AHCI.

Now in the AHCI mode in bios and a AHCI driver installed, a cold boot takes 15 seconds and a reboot hangs on the splash screen.

I disabled fast boot, now the button can't be even checked on:






Ran sfc /scannow with no errors.



Turned off hybernation:



The fast boot however is still enabled in BIOS, should I turn that off?

- - - Updated - - -

could it be this driver needs to be updated?

What's the "BIOS default configuration"? I cannot put it back in the RAID mode like the machine came with since it no longer has disks in that RAID configuration, I disabled it due not being necessary. Samsung 970 (Plus or Pro) are at least 3500 Mbs/second, faster than the RAID it came with.

- - - Updated - - -

Everything else in BIOS is standard.

Changing fast boot off/on in BIOS did not make any difference.

This should be an easy case to resolve. Cold boot after a shutdown is perfectly fine. A "reboot" hangs on the MSI splash screen.

Do a windows update search to see if something is going to be downloaded for this change from raid to ahci.

If there is nothing and you can not solve the problem with other suggestions, I fear that it will make a clean installation of windows with the bios configured in ahci mode

Steve C said:

I meant load the BIOS defaults which should be in the menu. Else remove ad replace the CMOS battery.

There is no CMOS battery in the GT80 SLI laptop. These exist only in desktops.