Wont boot past “Successfully initialized NVMe drive”

I have Ventura installed on a 970 EVO SSD, and previously had windows on a seperate Crucial SSD. I had issues with my windows installation which forced me to buy a samsung ssd for that OS. Unfortunately for me, I bought the 970 EVO PLUS. I know that there are certain compatibility things with hackintosh in regards to the drive, however I have Windows installed on the drive - my MacOS installation persists on the 970 EVO drive as it has been this entire time.

Now, I’m getting a strange kernel panic type error (picture attached). Apparently, you can run this SSD after a firmware update? But A. i dont have MacOS installed on this drive for that to even matter and B. I already did the update

I tried - using explorer++ on windows & propertree to add nvme=-1 to boot args // didnt work - updating firmware for 970 EVO PLUS using samsung magician and/or the iso burned to a usb // didnt work

Im open to suggestions - can anyone help me fix this?