Laptop will not install Windows media from USB?

Jon_01

Hi everyone,

Can the people here who are really tech savvy understand this?

I bought a new Dell G7 a couple of months back, all good until Dell pushed out a firmware update and driver update to together and it messed the system up (random reboots, wifi failure and blue screening 4 or 5 times a day).
No problem, I thought, just reinstall a clean version of W10...

Now, I've done this lots of times and never had a problem... until now.

The system will not install from the USB. The MS installer can't see any of the M.2 drives.  Ok, so all you need to do is download the drivers from Intel, place them on the usb and show the installer where there are, right?  No.  Point the installer at the driver folder and it shows as empty!  Rename it, same problem.  Place the drivers on the root of of the usb, no, the installer still can't see them!

Call Dell 'support', they try the same thing I just have and it still doesn't load the drivers.
After around 2 hours on the phone and lots of head scratching at Dell someone comes on the phone and says, 'As it's a 10th gen cpu it can't see the drivers when you use dos'?????  What?

Luckily there's a hidden section of the Dell bios that will reinstall W10 for you (I don't know how it did it, I'd lost the will to live by then).

Does that make any sense to anyone that works with systems full time?  How am I supposed to install any other op system as the only option is to use the bios to install and that will only install W10?

(btw, I tried 4 different usb sticks and downloaded the drivers 5 times from 2 different Intel mirrors, I don't think the media or the files were the problem. And Dell download their own version of the drivers and they still couldn't be seen by the installer !)

Thanks. . . 

Neil_Jones

The BIOS mention of which you speak is more likely the built-in system restore.  Which is fine until the hard drive packs up...

Re: drivers, make sure you use the latest version of 10 (ie 21H1), not any previous version.

Jon_01

Neil_Jones said:

The BIOS mention of which you speak is more likely the built-in system restore.  Which is fine until the hard drive packs up...

Re: drivers, make sure you use the latest version of 10 (ie 21H1), not any previous version.

I thought it should have a restore partition, but it seems that Dell have stopped using that idea.
Whatever it is, it downloads from MS. There was a download monitor giving % of data transferred.

Neil_Jones

Might be this:

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-reinstall-or-reset-windows-10-via-the-cloud

It was added to 10 in v1909, its the Windows equivalent of Apple's Internet Recovery.  Except normally you have to invoke it yourself.

Jon_01

Neil_Jones said:

Might be this:

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-reinstall-or-reset-windows-10-via-the-cloud

It was added to 10 in v1909, its the Windows equivalent of Apple's Internet Recovery.  Except normally you have to invoke it yourself.

Thanks, Neil,
Could be that Dell have re-skined it put it in the bios?  Still pain only being able to load one version of one op system!

[Deleted User]

Did you use the Dell USB OS download tool?

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-uk/drivers/osiso/recoverytool/WB64A

This should work as it will contain the Dell specific drivers for your system.

Jon_01

[Deleted User] said:

Did you use the Dell USB OS download tool?

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-uk/drivers/osiso/recoverytool/WB64A

This should work as it will contain the Dell specific drivers for your system.

The guy from Dell support tried it and, again, it couldn't see any of the HD's...