Question Windows 11, cannot install. "No device drivers found..."

[Glo.]

Im coming from Fedora Linux installation, and want to install Windows 11 on my PC.

NVMe SSD on which I would install Windows 11 has been wiped, formatted with NTFS in Diskpart, the partition is active.

When I try to install Windows, there is a prompt stating that "no device drivers have been found". There is plenty on this topic in the internet, and I have tried every possible scenario, including downloading drivers for Intel RST, and it still doesn't work.

Here is the thing. When the USB with the drivers is connected, there should be visible iaStorVD.sys or iaStorAC.sys visible for the installation, assuming this is what is being needed. Problem is that those .sys files are nowhere to be seen for the installation manager. Only .inf files are visible, and NOTHING else which is in the folders, and there are .exe, .sys, etc files in the folders.

I have tried every possible configuration in UEFI(apart from making factory reset), I have tried every possible configuration of secure boot, and CMS being disabled. Tried TWO Pendrives, tried 4 different USB ports, tried two different Windows ISOs. Still no result.

My PC:
Core i3-12100F, 8 GB RAM 3200 MHz, ASRock B660M-iTX/AC, RX 6500 XT, 250 GB Lexar NM610 SSD.

I am completely lost for words with how difficult can Windows 11 install be.

 

[WilliamM2]

Soooo what was the issue?

The install media was not booting in UEFI mode. A common issue when using third party software to create it, and not having the settings right, like Rufus, etc.

That's why I always recommend using the media creation tool. It's automatic, and the easiest method there is.

 

[Tech Junky]

The install media was not booting in UEFI mode. A common issue when using third party software to create it, and not having the settings right, like Rufus, etc.

That's why I always recommend using the media creation tool. It's automatic, and the easiest method there is.

It was a bit more than that. OP ended up with a W10 install using the MCT. The question that stands now is if the PC will upgrade to W11 or will it fail due to some other issue. It still doesn't explain why using the MCT allowed W10 to be installed vs burning the ISO to the USB. If the PC UEFI is set to not use CSM / MBR it either shouldn't boot from the USB if it's MBR or it will force the drive conversion upon hitting install.

I use Rufus for most everything and started playing with Ventoy a bit. Rufus doesn't fuss over what is being used but also consumes the entire drive for the install media. Ventoy for me seems to work for everything but Windows for some reason.

Using Linux to make a media CD/USB is fairly straight forward though as just right click the image and hit burn in most cases.

10 Useful Tools to Create Bootable USB from an ISO Image

There are quite a number of tools that can help you create a bootable USB drive. Some will even go further and let you create a multi-boot USB drive.

www.tecmint.com

I've had instances where something quirky happened either during a burn or while trying to boot and had to finesse things a bit using unetbootin. I don't recall the issue though as it was awhile back at this point.

The foundation though of making things work is to ensure EFI is being used on the booted system or forcing EFI on the disk being used to make the ISO bootable. Making sure CSM is disabled in the BIOS. Boot and hit install. Should be fairly simple though with the newer UEFI setups there are some quirks with the stupid secure boot keys / locking the drive to the system / sometimes UUID conflicts for the drive being used.

######################
I try to avoid using MSFT tools if at all possible as they tend to duplicate the steps needed vs burning the ISO using other methods. I block MSFT domains and hate the updates that get pushed that cause issues so, it's risky to let DNS open up for an ISO download from them directly vs sourcing it somewhere else. WU tends to download older drivers than what I currently use through other sources and it just makes for more work to get things back to where they were before stoopid updates get applied.

Dealing with MSFT is just a part of life we all have to deal with at some point because the majority of the apps we use often are tied to their crappy code. There's always the dual boot or VM option to only use it as needed but, that's inconvenient if you're constantly using apps that need W to run. While there are always improvements being made for Wine in Linux it's still cumbersome to deal with and not 100% for popular software.

 

[WilliamM2]

It was a bit more than that. OP ended up with a W10 install using the MCT. The question that stands now is if the PC will upgrade to W11 or will it fail due to some other issue. It still doesn't explain why using the MCT allowed W10 to be installed vs burning the ISO to the USB. If the PC UEFI is set to not use CSM / MBR it either shouldn't boot from the USB if it's MBR or it will force the drive conversion upon hitting install.

I'm not talking about drive he was insalling to. I'm taling about the install media. It WILL still boot to the USB drive, just not in UEFI mode. I've ran into the issue more than once.

If he wants Windows 11, he should have made a Win 11 install USB with MCT, why the extra step of upgading?

You seem to like to overcomplicate things.

 

[Tech Junky]

You seem to like to overcomplicate things.

No, I'm just stating what's happened in this thread and what I've personally done.

MCT isn't required to get an ISO to install in UEFI mode. Is it easier? Maybe. Those of us though that have a rooted hatred for using MSFT tend to do things differently than your average idiot with a hunger for Windows.

Having seen the OP state using Linux garners they're apt to figure out the issue rather than take the easy way out. Configuring a USB drive to be GPT / EFI isn't that difficult to do. Burning the image to the drive and then using gparted to move things around and tag it as EFI / bootable and running

sudo apt-get install --reinstall grub-efi-amd64

and playing around with the filesystem a bit. For EFI to work there's a 50MB size needed for the EFI partition vs the enormous size wanted by MSFT and some other partitioning tools.

nvme0n1     259:0    0 931.5G  0 disk   
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0    49M  0 part   /boot/efi
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0 931.5G  0 part   /

Anyway, there are ways to make this USB / Windows / EFI work outside of the dummy method. Why Balena didn't work? Can't say, never used it.

As to the whole W10 >> upgrade to W11 sometimes after you've been mucking around with Windows install issues you just give up when you get something working and just live with it for a while before taking on a different install or upgrade. Windows PTSD is real

 

[WilliamM2]

I think you just proved my point... again.

 

[Shmee]

I don't see a reason to go to Windows 11, now that he has Windows 10. As his CPU doesn't have any E cores, just P cores.

 

[Glo.]

The question is this: why doesn't Etcher, even if people around the internet say that is indeed the case, burned the ISO images in UEFI mode.

It wasn't a problem with Linux, MacOS installs, and people have been able to write UEFI ISO images of Windows installations to the USB pendrive, just not on this ocasion, it appears.

And yes, I have already prepared Windows 11 USB pendrive, since that is the only Windows key that I have available.

 

[WilliamM2]

For future reference, you can install straight to Windows 11 using a valid Win 7, Win 8, or Win 10 key.

 

[WelshBloke]

The question is this: why doesn't Etcher, even if people around the internet say that is indeed the case, burned the ISO images in UEFI mode.

It wasn't a problem with Linux, MacOS installs, and people have been able to write UEFI ISO images of Windows installations to the USB pendrive, just not on this ocasion, it appears.

And yes, I have already prepared Windows 11 USB pendrive, since that is the only Windows key that I have available.

Balena doesnt support making Windows bootable pendrives (not that they make it easy to find out).

"Why is my drive not bootable?
−
Etcher copies images to drives byte by byte, without doing any transformation to the final device, which means images that require special treatment to be made bootable, like Windows images, will not work out of the box. In these cases, the general advice is to use software specific to those kind of images, usually available from the image publishers themselves. You can find more information here."

etcher/docs/USER-DOCUMENTATION.md at master · balena-io/etcher

Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives, safely and easily. - balena-io/etcher

github.com

 

[BoomerD]

Bumping this thread because I hit a similar snag while trying to install Windows 10 on a freshly wiped SSD tonight. Windows Media Creation Tool kept telling me, "Windows Cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style."
Didn't matter what I tried...reformatted the disk as NTFS, went into the BIOS to look for a way to change the file system to UEFI...nothing worked...Finally, I rebooted with the thumb drive in the USB port (again) and chose UEFI USB Drive...and it worked.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Bumping this thread because I hit a similar snag while trying to install Windows 10 on a freshly wiped SSD tonight. Windows Media Creation Tool kept telling me, "Windows Cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style."
Didn't matter what I tried...reformatted the disk as NTFS, went into the BIOS to look for a way to change the file system to UEFI...nothing worked...Finally, I rebooted with the thumb drive in the USB port (again) and chose UEFI USB Drive...and it worked.

the other option is to remove the partition(s) and set it up as MBR.

the change to uefi happened a while ago, but it still causes problems for many people. As a field tech I had to explain this to many people, even support reps.

uefi is where I wanna be though.

 

[BoomerD]

the other option is to remove the partition(s) and set it up as MBR.

the change to uefi happened a while ago, but it still causes problems for many people. As a field tech I had to explain this to many people, even support reps.

uefi is where I wanna be though.

I finally got it. Once I made the change in the windows installer to the UEFI USB drive...it worked. When I first started the process, it only showed "Lexar USB drive, but after a couple of reboots, the installer showed both "Lexar USB drive" and "UEFI Lexar drive."

 

[WilliamM2]

You joined just to give him the wrong info, for a problem that was solved 9 months ago? Not sure what the angle is.

 

[mikeymikec]

Windows XP used to have an issue where it wouldn't install if the bootable USB drive was put in a USB 3.0 port. It would keep asking for drivers and wouldn't go past the drive selection screen. Booting with USB 2.0 port would enable the installation to work correctly. I hope Windows 11 setup hasn't inherited some stupid bug like that.

It hasn't. Win8 and later can natively handle USB 3.0 ports.

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yes, I inadvertently thread necro'd, it's first thing in the morning for me. I read old posts, thought "disable VMD", came across my comment suggesting that, thought "huh...", then carried on replying to igor's post anyway. <shrugs>

 

[WilliamM2]

It hasn't. Win8 and later can natively handle USB 3.0 ports.

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yes, I inadvertently thread necro'd, it's first thing in the morning for me. I read old posts, thought "disable VMD", came across my comment suggesting that, thought "huh...", then carried on replying to igor's post anyway. <shrugs>

My post wasn't directed at you. Some new spammer revived the thread first.

 

[mikeymikec]

My post wasn't directed at you. Some new spammer revived the thread first.

I know I felt the general perception is that those who contribute to a thread necro share at least some of the blame as the person who necro'd in the first place, hence that last para of my previous post.