New
#21
I'm just not sure where to go next. I have asked @NavyLCDR to come help. He is excellent at this.
The full system specs with the exact make and model of the laptop would help. Also what OS did the laptop come from the factory with? I suspect you are booting the USB flash drive in legacy BIOS (CSM) mode, which causes it to install to the SSD as MBR partitioned without the EFI System Partition and then when you reboot the computer without the USB flash drive inserted, it is trying to boot the SSD in UEFI mode and can't find the required EFI system files to do so.
It is a Dell XPS L702X. It came with Win 7 Home, was running Win 10 with a spindle drive, the drive was making noise so I replaced it with an SSD drive.
Core i7 2670 QM @ 2.20 Ghz with 8 GB RAM.
I got it to work, with the help of a good friend. He suggested I install Win 7. It created the 100MB partition for the MBR. Then I formatted C: left the 100MB partition created by Win 7, and Installed Win 10. It works like a champ
Glad it worked for you. That's weird that Windows 10 setup did not create the same partition.
I might be wrong but I think it has to do with what windows version one uses OEM compare to retail. I have 2 Dell PCs and I know Dell is funny that way . That windows 7 you used was it originally for Dell ?