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I have the Razer Blade 15 Advanced 2021 (RZ09-0409), and I'm trying to reinstall Windows. When I boot into the installation media, I can't select my SSD as the target device for installation. This happens with both SSDs I've tried: the generic SSD which came with the laptop, and a Western Digital SSD which I bought new. I have recreated the installation media several times from four different computers, but the same issue persists. Sometimes I will receive a warning that the installation media could not find a driver for a storage device ("CD, DVD, or USB"), and I'm confident that a missing driver is the issue as both SSDs function perfectly fine when running Ubuntu 22.04 both from a live USB and an install on the Samsung SSD.

However, I can't find the correct storage drivers. Razer doesn't seem to provide motherboard or storage drivers on their downloads site, and when searching with the motherboard name (Razer CH570) no drivers appear. Is there some generic storage/NVMe driver which I can add to the installation media, or does anyone know where to find the motherboard-specific drivers? Or maybe I'm completely wrong and the missing driver isn't specifically for the motherboard.

I'm happy to provide any additional information which might be of use.

EDIT: here is the output of lspci -nn which shows the two SSDs I have:

10000:e1:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: Sandisk Corp Device [15b7:5017] (rev 01)
10000:e2:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: Solid State Storage Technology Corporation Device [1e95:1001] (rev 01)

EDIT 2: output of lspci -tvnn

-+-[10000:e0]-+-01.0  Intel Corporation Device [8086:09ab]
 |            +-01.1-[e1]----00.0  Sandisk Corp Device [15b7:5017]
 |            \-06.0-[e2]----00.0  Solid State Storage Technology Corporation Device [1e95:1001]
 \-[0000:00]-+-00.0  Intel Corporation 11th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [8086:9a36]
             +-01.0-[01]--+-00.0  NVIDIA Corporation GA104M [GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile / Max-Q 8GB/16GB] [10de:249c]
             |            \-00.1  NVIDIA Corporation GA104 High Definition Audio Controller [10de:228b]
             +-02.0  Intel Corporation TigerLake-H GT1 [UHD Graphics] [8086:9a60]
             +-04.0  Intel Corporation TigerLake-LP Dynamic Tuning Processor Participant [8086:9a03]
             +-06.0  Intel Corporation Device [8086:09ab]
             +-07.0-[02-2c]--
             +-07.2-[2d-57]--
             +-08.0  Intel Corporation GNA Scoring Accelerator module [8086:9a11]
             +-0a.0  Intel Corporation Tigerlake Telemetry Aggregator Driver [8086:9a0d]
             +-0d.0  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Thunderbolt 4 USB Controller [8086:9a17]
             +-0d.2  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Thunderbolt 4 NHI #0 [8086:9a1f]
             +-0d.3  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Thunderbolt 4 NHI #1 [8086:9a21]
             +-0e.0  Intel Corporation Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller [8086:9a0b]
             +-14.0  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 xHCI Host Controller [8086:43ed]
             +-14.2  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Shared SRAM [8086:43ef]
             +-15.0  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Serial IO I2C Controller #0 [8086:43e8]
             +-16.0  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H Management Engine Interface [8086:43e0]
             +-1b.0-[58]--
             +-1b.2-[59]----00.0  Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5260 PCI Express Card Reader [10ec:5260]
             +-1b.3-[5a]----00.0  Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX210/AX211/AX411 160MHz [8086:2725]
             +-1f.0  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H LPC/eSPI Controller [8086:438b]
             +-1f.3  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H HD Audio Controller [8086:43c8]
             +-1f.4  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H SMBus Controller [8086:43a3]
             \-1f.5  Intel Corporation Tiger Lake-H SPI Controller [8086:43a4]

Thanks!

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  • 1) What Windows version are you trying to install; and, 2) how did you create the install medium (CD/USB) – what tool did you use and how?
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 6:35
  • 3) Can you post lspci -nn output from Ubuntu, at least the line that describes the SSD; 4) can you hit Shift-F10 in the Windows installer, check whether sc query stornvme says the service/driver is running, and try taking a look at devmgmt.msc as well?
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 6:37
  • I've tried to install both Windows 10 and 11 - I'd prefer 10 so that's what I'm working with right now. I've tried creating the bootable USB with the Windows Installation Media Creation Tool on two separate Windows 10 devices and a Windows 11 device, and from an ISO with both Rufus https://rufus.ie and with the linux dd utility. I've edited my question include the output of lspci -nn that has the NVMe devices. I'll take a look at the things in your fourth question now.
    – Duncan
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 6:56
  • That's an unusual output... one rarely sees non-zero PCI domains, and I didn't know that a domain above 0xFFFF is even possible to have at all. Do all devices have that 10000: in front of the PCI address, or just the SSDs? (out of curiosity, what does the entire lspci -tvnn look like?)
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 7:07
  • There are 5 devices which have an address starting with 10000 - the two NVMe devices, two PCI bridges (Intel), and a "system peripheral" (Intel). Everything else starts with 0000. I will edit the output of lspci -tvnn into my question. As for sc query stornvme, the output was sc is not recognized as an internal or external command..., so I'm recreating the Windows 10 installation media once again, this time using the Installation Media Creator software on Windows 10. sc.exe didn't seem to be in the directory at all, and I couldn't open devmgmt.msc.
    – Duncan
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 7:20

1 Answer 1

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Is there some generic storage/NVMe driver which I can add to the installation media,

Windows 10 already has a generic NVMe driver StorNvme present on all systems. (It's actually been there since Windows 8.1, and it's decent quality by now.)

Your lspci output is somewhat odd in that it shows all SSDs on PCI domain 0x10000 – which is unusual as PCI domains are normally a 16-bit value that ends at 0xFFFF. It seems, however, that 0x10000 is where Intel VMD pseudo-domains start at (on Linux specifically), and the root device [8086:09ab] in that domain indeed seems to be some kind of Intel RST/VMD controller.

It's not uncommon for Intel to do weird stuff with storage devices like that (e.g. the Intel RST thing), and indeed Lenovo even has a documentation page saying that VMD causes all attached SSD devices to be invisible to the OS.

So your SSDs work on Ubuntu because Linux has a driver for Intel VMD specifically – it treats the VMD controller as a particular kind of PCI host bridge, so that the rest of the OS sees right through it.

On Windows, however, as I understand it you are supposed to access only the VMD controller as if it were a RAID controller; i.e. you probably need to integrate the Intel RST driver into Windows. (Alternatively, go through your firmware settings and turn off Intel RST completely – that should make the SSDs show up as independent devices.)

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  • Thank you! With the last link you provided, I was able to add the appropriate driver to the installation media, and I've successfully reinstalled Windows 10 on my SSD.
    – Duncan
    Commented Nov 6, 2023 at 8:19

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