Possible solution to blank screen during Win10 clean install

I encountered the blank screen issue while trying to clean install Win10 on old XP era HW. This is how I got around that.

The box was decent for that era: XP pro (x32), P4@3.6Ghz, dual HD raid. It boots just as fast as any other HD PC I have. Using an extra W7p license I had, I first did a clean install of W7 pro (x32) to see how it would perform. I had no issues with the Rufus built flash drive install, and performance is fine for general use. Note that I didn't want to lose this W7 install so I pulled the HD out and put in my second XP pro HD to install over.

I tried installing W10 pro (x32) v2004 using a flash drive created from the mediacreationtool. When I booted, I got 30sec of blinking cursor, a few seconds of the juggling dots graphic, and then a blank screen forever. It looked like there was a graphics card incompatibility with the W10 installer, but after seeing all the other posts about the issue and all the things people tried, it wasn't that. I next tried a Rufus built flash drive from the Win10 iso, but you can also read many posts proving that does not matter either. BTW, you will want to add ei.cfg to the sources folder of the install media if you want the choice of 10pro vs 10home vs all the other versions. By default it will force its best guess which is often wrong.

It turns out that even if you are doing a clean install, the newer W10 installers seem to look at what is already on the HD before it decides if you are worthy. Anything other than 7p or 8p probably makes you unworthy. After I safely cloned my W7pro drive and put THAT drive back in, the W10 installer decided I was OK and showed me the install dialogs (including the version selection). W10p installed fine, and the gatherosstate+genuineticket method still works for activation. Performance was boggy at first, but after getting some driver updates and rebooting a few times, it is now fine for general use (on just 3GB Ram). ClassicShell and Firefox are what make W10 palatable for me.

tns1, it sounds like the only real difference is in what disk you were installing onto, is that correct?

I think that there must be something else to explain the problem. At that early stage of installation, Windows could care less what is on your HD or even whether there is a hard drive in the system or not! It's simply too early in the installation process. At the very least you should be getting to the first static screen where Windows is prompting you to make a selection. That screen should look like this:



Could you just confirm that Windows was indeed failing before you even got that screen?

Yes, everything identical except one HD had a fresh bootable XP pro install, and the other HD had a fresh bootable 7pro install. Using the first HD, I never saw any W10 installer dialog, only the circling ball splash screen. Tried with different USB ports. The install media was the same - a Rufus built USB created from a Win10 ISO v2004.

This windows installer takes a great deal of time before it deigns to show you anything, even when it works. This is in contrast to the few W7 and earlier W10 installs I have done prior. I suggest you google "blank screen during Windows 10 install" to see that my experience is not unique, and that it seems to have nothing to do with the method or format of the flash drive installer, or the graphics card present. I will note that I created the flash drive on a different PC (W7p), and when I used the mediacreator tool to first create the flash drive, and later to create an ISO, these steps included a very lengthy examination period which makes no sense because the install target is a different PC with different HW. On the target I also originally had RAID1 configured for both drives. I deleted that RAID array before beginning all this, but both drives still had bootable XP pro, and I believe RAID settings still preside in the Intel CMOS on the Dell MB. What I did not try is to start with a blank HD.

hsehestedt said:

tns1, it sounds like the only real difference is in what disk you were installing onto, is that correct?

I think that there must be something else to explain the problem. At that early stage of installation, Windows could care less what is on your HD or even whether there is a hard drive in the system or not! It's simply too early in the installation process. At the very least you should be getting to the first static screen where Windows is prompting you to make a selection. That screen should look like this:



Could you just confirm that Windows was indeed failing before you even got that screen?

I'm glad you got it working. Did you still want to get it working on the other drive?

I am good. I now have W7p, W10p on each of the original drives. The BIOS is too old to support more than one boot drive, so it does require a cable swap to switch the OS, but that's OK. I really didn't think W10 would run so well on this limited HW.
thanks

hsehestedt said:

I'm glad you got it working. Did you still want to get it working on the other drive?