Windows 11 Pro re-installation

fwor

It's a long, long time since I used Windows and in that time I had forgotten just how difficult it can be if you want to do anything even slightly non-standard!

I've just bought a Lenovo M70q Tiny which has Windows 11 Pro installed. It looks brand new but I don't know the history, so I would like to re-install Win 11 Pro from scratch, from a MS ISO which I have downloaded myself.

But... when I start the genuine MS install ISO, I get "Setup is Starting" and then a box comes up that says

"A media driver that your computer needs is missing. This could be a DVD, USB or Hard disk driver. If you have a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive with the driver on it, please insert it now".

I've downloaded every Win 11 driver from Lenovo's website for this model of PC, but none of them achieve anything other than a message saying that no new device drivers were found.

The "slightly non-standard" bit is that once I have Win11 working, I want to turn it into a dual-boot machine which will run Linux - but I'm nowhere near getting to that bit yet!

Any helpful suggestions to get me over this initial obstacle?

Spies

There is usually a small download under the storage Controller category which is basically a folder with an inf file in, this is the one the windows installation is looking for, you need to browse to the folder that has these files extracted, then windows setup will be able to see the drive. 

fwor

Problem is that Lenovo provide all of their drivers as self-extracting .exe files, so I have to pre-extract them onto a flash drive and then point Setup at each of these, but none seem to work.

In the Storage driver file there are six folders. There's one for AHCI, two for the Optane  HSA Component and Extension, PinningComponent, RAID and VMD. The Optane ones offer some options that match the hardware, but none actually get anywhere.

I can feel my life force ebbing away as the hours pass and hundreds of drivers are tried but nothing works. Takes me right back to my first Windows 95 installation...

[Edit: 2 hours later, still no progress]

gefnew

Windows 11Windows 10

To reset your PC, go to Start  > Settings  > System  > Recovery . Next to Reset this PC , select Reset PC. Then, select Keep my files, choose cloud or local, change your settings, and set Restore preinstalled apps? to No. 
Try this from Microsoft.

fwor

Thanks - it's not really what I want, as I need to re-size and re-arrange the disk partitions so I can fit my Linux install on, and I'm not sure how well Windows will recover from that.

But I may have no option - I think Lenovo must put Win11 on as a disk image write to the NVME module before it's installed at the factory.

As an aside, it's sort of comforting to realise that all of the installation crapiness that I remember so well from my first install of WinXP (e.g. Blue Screen of Death with the helpful error message "IRQ not less than or equal") almost all seems to still be there, 20 years later...

gefnew

This then without losing existing win installation.
How to Set up Windows 11 and Linux Dual Boot? [Full Guide] (minitool.com)

fwor

Thanks, but I don't see installing Linux as a dual-boot OS as a problem - that will just work, exactly as it has done for a decade or more.

The issues are purely down to the fact that I have no way of knowing what is in the existing Win11 install - so if possible I would like to lose it entirely and have a brand new Win11 install from media downloaded from MS.

It seems I can't make progress until I can get past the barrier of the Windows setup program not having a driver, but not being able to tell me what driver it doesn't have.

[I should add that Secure Boot is not an issue here - I've simply turned it off, as the machine is one that will always be under my physical control - it's a server that will sit in a cupboard for its entire life]

400ixl

If it is going to sit in a cupboard, I am slightly confused as to what the dual boot requirement is? 

You should be able to use the Windows Disk management software or a utility app to do the disk partitioning, even with Windows 11 installed to allow for dual booting.

If not the use a boot disk utility application and create the partitions then download the Lenovo recover media (https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/gb/en/products/desktops-and-all-in-ones/thinkcentre-m-series-desktops/m70q/downloads/order-recovery-media) to install into the new partition.

Other option is if it is going to be in Linux pretty much all of the time then Install that and Windows 11 into a VM for anything you may need to use that for.

Olinda99

I had exactly this problem on a Dell Windows 11 laptop - turns out Windows 11 Pro does not have the required Intel Raid drivers. 

Yes there is no RAID in the laptop but the drivers were required to access the hard drive anyway.

Not sure if this helps but if you haven't tried it Google Intel Raid Driver (you did say you had tried RAID but not sure what you did)

Edit: if you really have problems, you could try installing W10 - you may get the same problem but you may not. Then upgrade to W11

fwor

400ixl said:

If it is going to sit in a cupboard, I am slightly confused as to what the dual boot requirement is?

Understood - it's hard to imagine how other people might want to use their PC's, unless they explain.

It's simple really - this box comes shipped with a valid, activated version of Win11 Pro and I want to have it available to diagnose future (as yet unknown) problems. I.e. I have no idea what it ~might~ be used for. But I have no other PCs currently running Win11 and I don't expect to buy another one that does in the foreseeable future.

Agreed, I could run Win11 (or 12 or whatever is current at the time) under Virtualbox but that's a fair bit of work and it's not really a proper test environment (because Virtualbox presents Windows with an "idealised/simplified" PC to install on).

fwor

Olinda99 said:

I had exactly this problem on a Dell Windows 11 laptop - turns out Windows 11 Pro does not have the required Intel Raid drivers. 

Yes there is no RAID in the laptop but the drivers were required to access the hard drive anyway.

Not sure if this helps but if you haven't tried it Google Intel Raid Driver (you did say you had tried RAID but not sure what you did)

Thanks - yes, I have tried installing the RAID drivers for the machine (downloaded from Lenovo's support website) but when that is finished it just says that no new device drivers were found.

I have a suspicion that it may need several device drivers rather than just one, and I've tried installing every single Win11 driver available from Lenovo. But it's a horrible task because the Setup programme won't accept a folder name and then search every lower level folder. You have to go right the way down to the lowest level every time. This has been a "feature" of Windows installation process for as long as I can remember - certainly right back to NT4. It makes for an incredibly slow process.

I wish someone at Microsoft would look at the way that a Linux install takes place, and ask themselves why they can't make something similarly elegant. But I doubt they care.