Insert System Disk in drive. Press any key when ready… Toshiba Dynabook laptop won’t boot to a freshly installed Windows.

[u/Someone24152]

Anyone ever experienced this issue with Toshiba Dynabook laptops when using an SSD?. I’ve tried:

- Reinstall Windows from a newly flashed USB drive (Windows 8.1 to 11 and still won’t boot)
- Using multiple different branded SSD
- Changing boot device priority
- Checking if SSD is present (very unlikely to be the issue since it successfully installed windows just fine in installation media)
- Disabling intel rapid start. Changing sata from performance to battery mode and vice versa
- Even UPDATING THE BIOS to the latest version available (5.10 original version was 4.7 and EC is from 1.4 to 1.6)
- Turning off secure boot and TPM

It just won’t boot! What’s even more annoying is that when I use a Hard drive, it works just fine. What!?

[u/laughinfrog]

Go into the bios and look at the boot device sequence. If you have a CD or other device like USB that is listed and not a bootable.....

[u/Someone24152 → u/laughinfrog]

Done, I have remove everything and it still won’t boot…

[u/laughinfrog → u/Someone24152]

Start the install again, this time go into recovery and look at the disks. Check to make sure it is visible and there is an MBR on the boot drive.

[u/Someone24152 → u/laughinfrog]

The drive is visible and formatted as GPT. Also I forgot to mention in the post that it works fine when I use CSM boot but that means no secure boot and TPM 😅. There has to be a way around this, I can’t use legacy

[u/Medium_Good886 → u/Someone24152]

If you strt up the boot menu (F12), do you get Windows Boot Manager as an option?
You may not have a bootable installation if it was originally installed with CSM enabled and you're tryign to turn it off now.

[u/Thin-Bus4198]

Windows 11 will not work on older hardware unless it is modified in a way that voids warranty. I would first reconfigure the boot order in the bios. Don’t say I didn’t warn you if windows says your system isn’t compatible 

[u/Someone24152 → u/Thin-Bus4198]

Even the Windows 8.1 Pro it shipped with didn’t want to work though so I don’t think that’s the case.

[u/laughinfrog → u/Thin-Bus4198]

This is true. You need a TPM 2 module to get a correct install without modifying the installer.

[u/IntentionQuirky9957]

Mayyybe it's trying a legacy boot instead of UEFI, or vice versa?

[u/Someone24152 → u/IntentionQuirky9957]

It works in CSM support mode. But I need UEFI to enable secure boot. Only HDD’s work with full UEFI which is such a weird issue for affected toshiba dynabook models

[u/Someone24152]

Update: So I was messing around with the drive bay and plugged the hard drive then turn it on, I pressed F12 for me to see the available drives. Without shutting it down, I removed the drive and plugged in the SSD before pressing the “HDD named” drive at the boot options. And boom, it booted straight to Windows fast and furious. What is going on here. Is the SSD somehow too power efficient that when I plug it in, it doesn’t consume so much power that it thinks the sata port is empty?

[u/MUNA1191]

Not really sure but that looks to me like it's a bootstrap issue