[SOLVED] Need help clean installing windows 10

[epichairguy]

My friend helped me install windows 10 onto an 8GB usb flash drive using Rufus. He made sure it worked by trying it on his own computer and it did. When I got home with the drive, I plugged it in, went to bios settings, made sure secure booting was disabled, had the boot mode to legacy+xhci, xhci handoff was enabled, usb legacy support enabled, and Windows 8.1/10 WHQL support disabled. I saved and rebooted, pressed f11 to choose the boot device and there were 4 options, "Enter setup" "UEFI Dell Recovery USB 8.07, Partition 1" "UEFI Dell Recovery USB 8.07, Partition 2" and "Dell Recovery USB 8.07" I clicked the partition 1 option, clicked install now, accepted license agreement, clicked Custom (advanced), and it said that it was unable to find any drives. I went back to my bios, disabled and enabled the settings I had just explained above, changed the boot mode to UEFI only (didnt work). I had also tried following this, https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ect-hard/83911a55-c82d-42b6-8369-3d6369fedf5f , but somehow it ended up not being able to detect any DRIVERS, so I restarted and it said that no operating systems were found. I am currently getting my friend to make another bootable USB again. I'm using the MSI click bios 5. If theres any specific screenshots you need let me know.

 

[onespeedbiker]

Describe your system; including motherboard and make/ model of all drives.

 

[epichairguy]

Motherboard: Msi B150 Gaming M3
PSU: Corsair CX550M
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce Gtx 1050
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100 CPU 3.70GH
RAM: HyperX Fury 16gb
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5” 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

 

[onespeedbiker]

I sounds like your computer is booting from an OS already on a hard drive; do you have more than one drive or was your hdd used in another computer? When you press f11 it should give you a list of drives, not partitions. Next I would return the BIOS to the default settings; a sata hdd is a legacy hdd, not a UEFI drive. Then I would create a Windows 10 USB installer as explained in this link. https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/ Interestingly the manual for your MB says to install windows from a DVD, so you may want to try that; download the Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft and then burn an install DVD.

 

[epichairguy]

I only have 1 hard drive and everything was brand new out of the box. I will try to find a compatible disk drive and try the dvd option. Also, I was curious if my friend could just take my hard drive, download windows 10 onto there from his computer and then I would put it back into my computer after he installed it. Would that be an option I have?

 

[onespeedbiker]

That's usually a bad idea, as when Windows 10 installs, it installs specfic drivers to the hardware and motherboard chips of a PC. Moving the hdd to another PC with different hardware and chips often will not even boot, and even if it does, it will not be very stable. The real issue appears to be your install USB which appears to been partitioned as a Dell recovery media, not a Windows 10 install USB. Your friend likely has a Dell computer and he created a recovery USB for his computer, which is why it is not working with your computer. I would create a Windows 10 install USB as is linked from Microsoft Media Creator, so you have a true Windows 10 install media and try to install Windows 10 again.

 

[Mr.Spock]

you probably want option 4, legacy install as you want it to detect the old HDD and any legacy devices.

But as mentioned it's preferable to to use the Media Creator tool.

My friend helped me install windows 10 onto an 8GB usb flash drive using Rufus. He made sure it worked by trying it on his own computer and it did. When I got home with the drive, I plugged it in, went to bios settings, made sure secure booting was disabled, had the boot mode to legacy+xhci, xhci handoff was enabled, usb legacy support enabled, and Windows 8.1/10 WHQL support disabled. I saved and rebooted, pressed f11 to choose the boot device and there were 4 options, "Enter setup" "UEFI Dell Recovery USB 8.07, Partition 1" "UEFI Dell Recovery USB 8.07, Partition 2" and "Dell Recovery USB 8.07" I clicked the partition 1 option, clicked install now, accepted license agreement, clicked Custom (advanced), and it said that it was unable to find any drives. I went back to my bios, disabled and enabled the settings I had just explained above, changed the boot mode to UEFI only (didnt work). I had also tried following this, https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ect-hard/83911a55-c82d-42b6-8369-3d6369fedf5f , but somehow it ended up not being able to detect any DRIVERS, so I restarted and it said that no operating systems were found. I am currently getting my friend to make another bootable USB again. I'm using the MSI click bios 5. If theres any specific screenshots you need let me know.

 

[Colif]

if everything was new out of the box you didn't need to change any settings at all to install 10, as its set up from factory. All you did was force it to use legacy boot which doesn't make any sense. why avoid GPT, its better in long term given MBR only supports hdd up to 2.2tb.

I would reset bios to defaults, put HDD as 1st boot drive and then use priority boot on save & exit screen to boot off the USB (probably need to haver USB in drive at startup to access it here)

That install USB is likely got an old version of Win 10 on it anyway so you better with a new installer as suggested by Onespeedbiker above. Not sure DVD is absolutely necessary given how few people have them now.

 

[Mr.Spock]

given the config, GPT has few advantages as the drive is only 1TB - and that can be remedied later

 

[Colif]

given op hasn't replied in over a month, it all might not matter. Have to assume its fixed by now?