NVMe m.2 drive refuses to boot on its original HP ProBook

Background (I apologize this will be long): I received this laptop from an end user after it stopped booting. Laptop is an HP ProBook 640 G5. NVMe M.2 contains Windows 10. Problem is, when the laptop attempts to boot with the m.2 installed, it will freeze on the HP SureStart screen. You cannot access boot menu options, but you can still CTRL ALT DEL to warm restart. Your only other option is to power down. I have encountered this problem once before on a newer Probook. I was able to resolve it after taking the following significant steps, although I don't know if it was a combination of both o

Question by Bonito on Super User, licensed CC BY-SA. We show a short excerpt and link to the original thread as credit.