Have never seen this before - Win 11 25H2 Setup ("Please Wait" to ASUS Prime z790-A

Finally making the move to Windows 11 for a digital audio workstation here and have been trying to install a (NT Lite) Win 11 25H2 ISO here for several hours now - one ISO was built yesterday - using the new 2023 boot certs and one I did a month ago - without the new certs.

In both cases here today - installing to a known good ASUS Prime z790-A - to a Samsung Pro 990 - this ISO runs the first setup screen to the 78% mark and then does it's first restart and then upon returning - Win Setup displays "Please Wait" - like forever. Can't even Shift-F10 - nothing while this first black screen is being displayed.

I am struggling to understand just what is going on here.

Both ISOs were prepped via Rufus 4.14p as I always do. Both ISOs install successfully in 4 mins flat to a VM.

Both ISO use a very conservative NT Lite settings template that I have used for years and installed on many a physical/virtual machine

What am I missing here - have never been jammed out like this.

S

If the install is stuck for more than 30 minutes, power the system off. Boot into WinPE, but don't run Setup again.

Copy the "\$Windows.~BT\Sources\Panther" and "\Windows\Panther" logs to the USB drive so you can browse the setup logs offline.

garlin said:

If the install is stuck for more than 30 minutes, power the system off. Boot into WinPE, but don't run Setup again.

Copy the "\$Windows.~BT\Sources\Panther" and "\Windows\Panther" logs to the USB drive so you can browse the setup logs offline.

Click to expand...

Exactly how would I get into WinPE if there is no way to get into it?

I get zero options at startup. My setup goes right into Disk Selection and then off it goes to the light blue “ Installing Windows 11” with the percentage counter going by.

That rolls to the first reboot and then it’s hang city “Please Wait” on the black screen reboot.

S

Boot WinPE, enter Shift-F10 to open a CMD shell. If you don't know which logs to copy, use XCOPY and take an entire folder to the the same USB drive you're using to install Windows. Obviously this won't work if you have an unattended file, or using Rufus to automate anything.