Question Cannot clean install Windows 11 on a Zotac G3 A7646 Desktop PC ?

[dunalduck]

Looking for help, any help is appreciated!

I haven't been purchasing PC for over a decade and my knowledge on hardware is reduced to 0. I've recently purchased a new gaming PC here and it comes with Windows 11 Home edition. It looks like a wonderful PC on paper.

• AsRock B650M-C motherboard
• AMD Ryzen 5 7600 6-core/12-thread 3.8GHz
• 16GB 6000MTs DDR5 (Up to 128GB)
• ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4060 8GB GDDR6 128-bit
• 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD

I made a very bad decision to clean install Windows 11 Pro edition. That ruined everything. I've tried several bootable USB from either Microsoft website or my company's internal resources, but all failed at the step "getting devices ready". I can boot into USB, finish applying image without errors. Then the PC reboots into black screen, "starting services" and "getting devices ready". During "getting devices ready", the white circle will slow down, stop and go, and eventually stuck. That's when the installation dies and the PC reboots. What's worse is that this procedure somehow damaged the original OS and I can no longer recover the OEM Windows 11 Home. I so regretted my decision

Strangely, Windows 10 Pro can be installed (though buggy). The motherboard is missing drivers in Windows 10 but can be installed from AsRock, except "AMD PSP" always has an alert sign. So I suspect Windows might not like this motherboard much? Inside of Win 10, I tried to upgrade to Win 11 via Windows update. Still, it fails in the same way. Something is definitely wrong, but I couldn't figure out what. It'd be a shame and hassle to return this PC.

I've run "sfc /scannow" and "chkdsk". No errors. I've run MemTest86. No errors. I've got several CLOCL_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT blue screen in different occasions but I don't know why.

Another very strange thing. AsRock comes with a "Auto Driver Installer" and you enable/disable it in BIOS. After I install a Windows 10, if I dare to enable Auto Driver Installer, then Windows 10 would crash and can never be rebooted into. What an unfit tool for Windows!

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Try and install Windows 11 in an offline mode. You can use this guide;

View: https://youtu.be/_GuFH9KdHC0

to allow the OS install to move forward without the need for an internet connection.

Once you've installed the OS, manually install all drivers relevant to your platform in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.