Solved Need assistance installing W11 to my new SSD

Hi

HP laptop; W11 was working just fine, but I needed a bigger drive.

Installed a new SSD, and am attempting to do an install from a bootable flash drive. It looks like this:



I plug in the stick, turn the computer on, I see the stick flashing for a few, and then get an on-screen message saying 'bootable media not found'.

I got the iso from here:


I used the third option, "Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices "

I see the "Create Windows 11 Installation Media" option, but that's an exe file, and I won't be able to boot from that, I dont think.

Is it a formatting thing, perhaps? Does the stick need to be NTFS, or does it not matter?

Ideas? Thanks in advance.

@riffwraith


When you first turn on the laptop start gently spamming the ESC key until the Boot Menu comes up.
When it does, you should see your USB stick listed. Select it and click OK.
Might be F9 instead of ESC.

On the Boot Menu, you may see two USB sticks listed. One will be UEFI, the other won't be.
Choose the UEFI one.

Your symptoms make me think there is a fault with the InstallUSB.
You don't say how you made it.
I suggest you remake it from your ISO using
Create Windows 11 Bootable USB Installation Media - ElevenForumTutorials


Best of luck,
Denis

riffwraith,

If I may, I'd like to make a suggestion. You have already received suggestions on making your boot media, but I want to point out something else. If you are already aware of this, my apologies.

Bear in mind that when you do a clean install to your new drive, you will need to also reinstall all your drivers which can be a bit of a time consumer. Same applies to any programs / applications.

You could do either of these things to make your life easier:

1) Create an image backup of your original drive and then restore that image to the new drive. By doing this, you will not need to reinstall anything - it will all still be there, just relocated to the new drive.

2) If you still prefer to clean install on the new drive, you could export and then later restore all your drivers, so you don't have to install them all one by one. I always think it a good idea to make a backup of the drivers just in case you are missing a driver somehow. Here is how:

BEFORE you replace the drive, with the original drive still in place, run these commands from an elevated command prompt:

MD C:\Drivers_Backup
pnputil /export-driver * C:\Drivers_Backup

When the export finishes, copy the C:\Drivers_Backup folder to a location that you will be able to access later, for example, a thumb drive.

After you have installed your new copy of Windows, open Device Manager. At the top of the device tree you will see the name of your compuer. Right-click it. Choose the option to add drivers and then point it to your copy of the exported drivers. Make sure that the option to include subfolders is selected. Click Next.

This may take a few minutes. Also, be aware that the screen may flash or go blank briefly when the display driver is being installed.

Done!

Hope this is helpful.

H is absolutely correct about backing up & restoring drivers.
Backup and Restore Device Drivers - ElevenForumTutorials
Doing this can save a stack of time.

By the way, why do you want to do a clean install onto your new disk instead of making a system image of your existing disk then restoring it to the new one?
Doing this can save several stacks of time.


All the best,
Denis

Try3 said:

stacks of time

Click to expand...

I like that. Have never heard that expression before. Hope you don't mind if I borrow that one occasionally.

Hannes,

OK but don't borrow "several stacks of time" because that is never used. I was just playing around with words at the time.
In return, I hope you will not mind promising never to use likely as though it was an adverb.


All the best,
Denis

Why is that? Just curious. It is perfectly acceptable to use likely as an adverb.

hsehestedt said:

Why is that?

Click to expand...

Because I will probably burst into tears.
Not
Because I will likely burst into tears.

Likely - adjective
Probably - adverb

I think that using likely as an adverb is a US TV habit that our media have also started to adopt.
I used to think it was an Americanism but the American friend I asked said that US usage of likely & probably was exactly the same as British usage. She hardly ever watches any TV.


All the best,
Thumbs up,
Tickety-boo,
Denis

Yeah, I'm no language expert. I just consider myself lucky if I can manage to get 10% of people to have any clue what it is that I am trying to communicate. I had to look this up:

Thx

I d/l-ed Rufus. Cant run it on W7. So, d/l it on W10 laptop. Then re-d/l the iso. Go through the rufus process, which honestly, is seemingly no different then me copying everything over manually.

Power on W11 laptop with USB stick installed. Hit F9. Am looking at:

Boot from UEFI file

I click ok and get

No valid file system avail

Not too sure what to try next.

This used to be easy. Put in a disc. Jeez.

If you mentioned the make and model of the PC in the thread, I don't spot it.

Is F9 the hotkey to do a one-time choice of the boot device? (It's F8 with my Asus motherboards, on my desktops.)

If things are working properly, the USB drive should appear as two entries. Both would clearly be the USB drive. To install 11 normally, you'd want the UEFI version.

If the USB drive isn't appearing, I'm not clear on why. It needs to be a FAT32 drive to function as a boot device, but Rufus is capable of configuring the drive even if it has to create an NTFS partition to accept an install.wim files that is larger than 4GB. (4GB is the largest size for a single file under Fat32.)

(I never use Rufus. Rather, I split the file into two pieces by using the dism command line tool. I haven't done a clean install recently, though.)

Another way to create a bootable USB drive is the Media Creation Tool. Official Microsoft method.

^

The instructions in the tut I was pointed to says:

• Under File system, select NTFS.

The Laptop is a HP 17-by4061nr

Will try again with the media creation tool.

If you use the Media Creation Tool to create the USB flash directly it creates a bootable USB flash drive that will boot universally in Legacy BIOS (and CSM) computers as well as UEFI computers. I just cannot understand the hesitancy that people have to using such a simple tool which very rarely does not work.

Try3 said:

Because I will probably burst into tears.
Not
Because I will likely burst into tears.

Likely - adjective
Probably - adverb

I think that using likely as an adverb is a US TV habit that our media have also started to adopt.
I used to think it was an Americanism but the American friend I asked said that US usage of likely & probably was exactly the same as British usage. She hardly ever watches any TV.


All the best,
Thumbs up,
Tickety-boo,
Denis

Click to expand...

Because I will probably burst into tears.
Not
Because I am likely to burst into tears.
Or
I am not likely to burst into tears.
Or
Because I am probably likely to burst into tears.

There are so, so, so many ways to use likely and probably that folks will never be probably, or likely to, burst into tears.

riffwraith said:

Boot from UEFI file

Click to expand...

I had never noticed that in a boot menu entry before.
You should also see in the same Uefi boot sources section, an entry beginning Uefi: and then the make of the USB. That is the entry you want.

By the way, I gave you a link to Option 2 of the InstallUSB tutorial by accident. It should work but I meant to link you to Option 1 above that, the normal Media creation tool method.

And?

Try3 said:

By the way, why do you want to do a clean install onto your new disk instead of making a system image of your existing disk then restoring it to the new one?

Click to expand...

Denis

Thx for all the help so far.

So, it apparently was the USB stick. I bought another, and I can start the process.

However, I have a new issue. The drive needs to be formatted. The install process isn't seeing the drive, and tells me I need to load a driver in order to be able to format. But when I try to do that, it tells me there is no signed driver avail. Shouldn't that be on the USB stick? If not, how do I proceed?

riffwraith said:

Thx for all the help so far.

So, it apparently was the USB stick. I bought another, and I can start the process.

However, I have a new issue. The drive needs to be formatted. The install process isn't seeing the drive, and tells me I need to load a driver in order to be able to format. But when I try to do that, it tells me there is no signed driver avail. Shouldn't that be on the USB stick? If not, how do I proceed?

Click to expand...

You are going to need the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) which should be available from the HP website. You will need to put the driver on the USB flash drive, then you can load it during the setup process.

Are you trying to do a fresh install of W11 on the new drive or just copy the old drive to the new drive?
If the latter, use Macrium Reflect Free to backup to media (i.e. 50GB USB drive), then re-image it back to the new drive by creating a Macrium Reflect boot flash drive (8GB is more than enough).

riffwraith said:

^

The instructions in the tut I was pointed to says:

• Under File system, select NTFS.

The Laptop is a HP 17-by4061nr

Will try again with the media creation tool.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

I see that F9 is the hotkey that brings up the boot menu.