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220-1201 Practice Question: A technician upgrades a PC from a traditional HDD…
A technician upgrades a PC from a traditional HDD to an NVMe SSD. After installation, the BIOS detects the SSD, but Windows does not appear in the boot menu. What should the technician do to resolve this?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Set the BIOS to UEFI boot mode and ensure the SSD is GPT partitioned
When migrating from an HDD to an NVMe SSD, the BIOS may detect the drive but the boot configuration may be missing or incorrect. The solution is to ensure the boot mode is set to UEFI (not Legacy) and that the drive is formatted with GPT, as NVMe drives require UEFI to boot.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Change the SATA mode from AHCI to IDE
Why it's wrong here
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) SSDs communicate directly with the CPU via the PCIe bus, bypassing the SATA controller entirely. Therefore, adjusting the SATA controller's operational mode between AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) and IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) has absolutely no bearing on the detection, performance, or bootability of an NVMe drive. This setting is exclusively for SATA-based storage devices.
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Enable Legacy boot mode in BIOS
Why it's wrong here
Legacy boot mode, also known as CSM (Compatibility Support Module) boot, relies on the Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme and traditional BIOS interrupt calls for device initialization. NVMe drives, however, are fundamentally designed to interface with the modern UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) firmware, which requires a GUID Partition Table (GPT) for booting. Attempting to boot an NVMe drive in Legacy mode will fail because the BIOS lacks the necessary drivers and protocols to recognize and initialize the NVMe controller.
- ✓
Set the BIOS to UEFI boot mode and ensure the SSD is GPT partitioned
Why this is correct
NVMe SSDs leverage the advanced features of UEFI firmware, which provides native support for the NVMe protocol and allows for larger, more flexible GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning. For an operating system to successfully boot from an NVMe drive, the system's BIOS must be configured for UEFI boot mode, and the NVMe SSD itself must be partitioned using the GPT scheme. If the drive was previously an MBR-partitioned HDD or cloned from one, it will require conversion to GPT or a fresh installation of the OS in UEFI mode to become bootable.
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Update the chipset drivers
Why it's wrong here
Chipset drivers are operating system-level software components that facilitate communication between the CPU and various motherboard components, including PCIe lanes and storage controllers, *after* the operating system has successfully loaded. If Windows is not appearing in the boot menu at all, it indicates a problem with the pre-boot environment or the bootloader itself, which occurs before chipset drivers are loaded. Therefore, updating chipset drivers will not resolve an issue where the NVMe drive is not recognized as a bootable device by the BIOS/UEFI firmware.
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Related to this question
Learn chapter
Network Configuration: IP, DNS, DHCP
Key term
UEFI
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a modern firmware interface that initializes hardware and boots the operating system, replacing the older BIOS.
Key term
HDD
A Hard Disk Drive (HDD) is a data storage device that uses spinning magnetic disks to read and write digital information.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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