Windows 11 Pro re-installation

fwor

Olinda99 said:

Not sure what you meant by shipped copy of windows 11 but in fact the original windows 11 did not have the drivers for the new Intel raid chips hence the reason you have to try and find them manually

what you could have done is downloaded the latest version of windows 11 version 22H2 they would have had the drivers in

The "shipped copy of Windows" is the copy that was installed on the PC when I received it. As explained in the OP, I have no reason to trust that copy of Windows, as I have no idea what (if anything) the previous owner installed on it. Maybe you would buy a secondhand PC and just use the copy of Windows that was on it, but I wouldn't.

I have downloaded the latest version of Windows 11 (22H2), directly from Microsoft. That is what I'm using to install from, and that is what gives me the error message in my OP. It does not have the drivers that the MS Setup program needs in it. If it did, this entire thread would not exist.

Olinda99

OK just checking what version you were using.

400ixl

I can understand why you initially didn't want to use the Lenovo recovery option due to wanting to modify the disk partitioning. As has been explained you can do that with the Microsoft Disk utility software or a 3rd party one, so why not just use that now?

Also, doing a factory reset of the OS will remove anything that a previous owner may have installed (if you select that option). This would negate the need for a full install as well.

You do appear to be putting up barriers for yourself that you don't need to.

fwor

400ixl said:

You do appear to be putting up barriers for yourself that you don't need to.

It depends how much you trust about what's on the SSD of a PC that has been owned by someone else. If I do a factory reset of the OS, that's just using the software that was on the disk when I got it. I don't want to do that, because I don't have a clue what's there.

You can call that "putting up barriers". I call it "being careful about the security of my data".

That's why I want to completely wipe the content of the SSD, create a new partition table and build the OS from scratch, purely from media and drivers that I can get from MS and Lenovo. Anything else relies on software that was on the SSD when I received it from the last owner.

As already explained, I have no problem doing the partitioning and changing from single-boot to dual-boot (any decent Linux distro will do it for me).

I just need to find a way past the obstructive MS Setup installer, as explained in my OP.

400ixl

The chances of someone having tampered with the factory reset code is negligible to zero. Much of the code for that is signed and any modification would be identified and the process fail.

You are imagining things that don't exist.

If you take your paranoia to that level, then you can't trust any source or drivers as they could have been tampered with. Spyware has been found in software from OEM factory builds in the past. 

As you only want Windows on the device to be able to keep the license and use it for diagnostics if ever required then the risk is even lower as you are hardly going to be doing anything in that OS which is sensitive.

Save yourself a lot of time and just use the tools you have which work rather than trying to find a solution to a non existent problem.

fwor

Well you may be right there. To an extent, the security risks involve with ordinary domestic computing are exaggerated.

But then again there's evidence of nationally-funded programmes (mainly, but not exclusively, Russian and Chinese) which have a lot of money and effort behind them.

You talk about me imagining things - but the fact is that neither you nor I actually know. You prefer to believe that they don't exist, and I prefer to take measures in case they do.

The one thing above all else that makes me want to solve this now rather than later is that now is the time to do a clean Win install, if possible. I can't (easily) do it later, after I have added in the Linux install, because any subsequent Windows installation will always screw up an existing Linux install. A MythTV Linux installation typically takes me hours to get working and I don't want to screw that up once it is done.

And it's worth pointing out that what I'm trying to do is not unreasonable. Anyone with a failure of the factory-fitted SSD would have to do exactly what I'm trying to do now - and they would face exactly the same problem that I'm facing.

Bonhomie

fwor said:

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?

fwor said:

400ixl said:

You do appear to be putting up barriers for yourself that you don't need to.

It depends how much you trust about what's on the SSD of a PC that has been owned by someone else. If I do a factory reset of the OS, that's just using the software that was on the disk when I got it. I don't want to do that, because I don't have a clue what's there.

You can call that "putting up barriers". I call it "being careful about the security of my data".

That's why I want to completely wipe the content of the SSD, create a new partition table and build the OS from scratch, purely from media and drivers that I can get from MS and Lenovo. Anything else relies on software that was on the SSD when I received it from the last owner.

As already explained, I have no problem doing the partitioning and changing from single-boot to dual-boot (any decent Linux distro will do it for me).

I just need to find a way past the obstructive MS Setup installer, as explained in my OP.

Erm...how exactly are you 'starting' the install? I suspect that you are trying to run it from within Windows by simply double clicking on a mounted setup.exe file.

Install from Boot. Make sure that your installation media is Bootable. What CPU is in the Lenovo M70q Tiny?
F1 or Fn + F1 on start up to get into the BIOS. Secure Boot is under Security if it needs to be toggled. F12 on start up to choose the USB drive as the one to Boot.

Bonhomie

Once you get to that point:

https://youtu.be/LhR3395LD4A?t=137

prowla

I wouldn't set the machine to dual-boot; instead I would install VMware Player and run Linux within a window (a Virtual machine, aka. VM).

I use this method daily; in fact the machine I am on and it runs Linux as the main "host" OS and has a Windows 7 VM running.

You can mix and match OS's regardless of which one the "host" PC is running; in a while I'll be signing in to work on a Mac which has a Linux VM on it; I have another Windows PC which has a Linux VM on it.

Additionally, the latest release of VMware allows you to run WIndows 11 on an non-compliant host PC.

fwor

Bonhomie said:

Erm...how exactly are you 'starting' the install? I suspect that you are trying to run it from within Windows by simply double clicking on a mounted setup.exe file.

Install from Boot. Make sure that your installation media is Bootable. What CPU is in the Lenovo M70q Tiny?
F1 or Fn + F1 on start up to get into the BIOS. Secure Boot is under Security if it needs to be toggled. F12 on start up to choose the USB drive as the one to Boot.

Thanks - here's what I've been doing (definitely not trying to run the setup from inside Windows!):

1. Download the Win11 multi-edition ISO from MS

2. Write it as a bootable image to a USB flash drive

3. Plug in to the Lenovo M70q and reboot, selecting F12 for the boot menu and selecting the bootable image on the flash drive.

The CPU in the M70q is a very ordinary Intel i5 - actually an i5-10400T, which should be pretty easy to run with anything. Linux (Mint) runs on it with no fuss at all, no extra drivers needed anywhere.