Windows installed without a USB installer connected to my system

A system for which I had to do an emergency recovery and had a completely empty NVM drive started to install windows after I resolved the BIOS issues. But there was no USB Windows installer connected to the system. I'm wondering how all this was actually possible. How did the windows installer know which version of Windows to install? Before I started this install process I disconnected both Ethernet cable and WiFi antenna. so, I could set up windows with a local admin account rather than a Microsoft account.

When I first started this process, I erased all existing partitions on the NVMe drive. I had some issues with the existing BIOS which is downrev from the current version. That BIOS had bugs in the selection of boot drive options, for example windows manager or USB UEFI drive... I struggled and struggled and struggled but I was never able to boot the system into the windows installer USB.

I had to do an emergency recovery because a BIOS flash was corrupted. Google search helped me to do the recovery and was actually more helpful than the motherboard manufacturer tech support.(MSI X870E Carbon WiFi)

After I was able to do a successful BIOS install (thank you Google) I expected my system to boot into BIOS, because I did not have a USB Windows installer present.at that time. Instead, it booted into windows install or. However, it skipped some of the preliminary steps like the version of Windows I wanted to install, pro versus home had my license. When windows was fully installed, I had a pro version installed, just as I had with my previous Windows install.

Supposing you haven't got one of those very small sized pendrives connected, or a disc left in a DVD... I've read several times from MS that the Windows Recovery disk can reinstall what you had in Windows or something along those lines. Doing one here in my semi-powerful W10 (FX8350) or basic performance W11 (10 watts Celeron J4125) takes several hours and I've always supposed they're spent in compiling what is installed.

It sounds to what prebuilts do when first connected... The wifi antenna isn't a digital requirement, but an analog help, it's possible that the connection works w/o it.

I'd look for apps and things you had installed but aren't installed in a clean Windows install. Maybe something was able to unformat the drive. It's physically possible, but it must be programmed somewhere and Idk if such thing exists in BIOSes or in an ad hoc cloud service. I'd also suspect it could have been an "automatic repair install", totally ignorant if such things are done or in what circumstances.

x509 said:

Before I started this install process I disconnected both Ethernet cable and WiFi antenna. so, I could set up windows with a local admin account rather than a Microsoft account.

Click to expand...

You don't need to disconnect from the internet to set up a local account. Just run:

start ms-cxh:localonly

x509 said:

I had some issues with the existing BIOS which is downrev from the current version. That BIOS had bugs in the selection of boot drive options, for example windows manager or USB UEFI drive... I struggled and struggled and struggled but I was never able to boot the system into the windows installer USB.

Click to expand...

One thing to try would have been resetting the BIOS to its default settings, which restores the default boot configuration (see image below).

When a Windows 11 installation USB flash drive is connected and the system is started using the one-time boot menu key (F11 on MSI motherboards), the USB device should appear in the boot menu if it was created correctly and detected by the firmware. This allows the system to boot from the installation media without changing the permanent boot order in the BIOS.



Here is the breakdown of how MSI motherboards handle boot order priorities.

1. FIXED BOOT ORDER Priorities​

This is your Master List. It defines the order of device types.
In this menu, you aren't usually selecting a specific brand of hardware (like "Samsung 990 Pro"). Instead, you are telling the motherboard which generic category to try first.

• Common Options: UEFI Hard Disk, UEFI USB Key, UEFI CD/DVD, UEFI Network.
• The Logic: If "UEFI Hard Disk" is set to Boot Option #1, the motherboard will look for a storage drive to boot from. If you have three different hard drives plugged in, it then looks at the BBS Priorities to decide which of those three to use.

2. UEFI Hard Disk Drive BBS Priorities​

This is your Sub-Selection List. "BBS" stands for BIOS Boot Specification.
This menu only becomes relevant if you have multiple devices of the same type (e.g., two different M.2 NVMe SSDs or several USB sticks).

• The Logic: This setting determines the internal ranking within the "Hard Disk" category.
• The Example: If multiple UEFI boot entries exist (for example Windows Boot Manager and Ubuntu), this menu can influence which entry is preferred.

Windows Setup automatically creates a UEFI boot entry in NVRAM (Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory) that points to \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi on the EFI system partition. On most UEFI/GPT systems with a single Windows installation, manual boot-order changes are usually unnecessary because the firmware automatically boots the Windows Boot Manager entry stored in NVRAM (see image above).

x509 said:

a completely empty NVM drive

Click to expand...

What was shown in Disk mgmt?


Denis

Try3 said:

What was shown in Disk mgmt?


Denis

Click to expand...

To reply to several post above, I need to point out that my system was bricked, according to MSI support, needing a warranty RMA to fix. Fortunately Google knew better. The key point is that once there was a successful BIOS install, the system started to install Windows without any intervention or action by me. Maybe I didn't explain that clearly enough in my OP.

JLArranz said:

Supposing you haven't got one of those very small sized pendrives connected, or a disc left in a DVD..

Click to expand...

No. Just a pendrive with a good BIOS file named MSI.ROM, and only that file. Nothing else.

JLArranz said:

It sounds to what prebuilts do when first connected... The wifi antenna isn't a digital requirement, but an analog help, it's possible that the connection works w/o it.

Click to expand...

I didn't know that. But at one point, the installer said that i wasn't connected to the Internet.

JLArranz said:

I'd look for apps and things you had installed but aren't installed in a clean Windows install. Maybe something was able to unformat the drive. It's physically possible, but it must be programmed somewhere and Idk if such thing exists in BIOSes or in an ad hoc cloud service. I'd also suspect it could have been an "automatic repair install", totally ignorant if such things are done or in what circumstances.

Click to expand...

If we think of Occam's Razor, how would such a program be included in an installer created with Media Creation Tool.