Trouble installing Windows 10 from laptop USB drive

I was given a laptop buy a friend - it's a Samsung NP470R5E. I am trying to upgrade the laptop from Windows 8 (which is what it's running now) to Windows 10. I have went into the laptop BIOS and set everything so it will boot from a USB drive, then I downloaded Windows 10 installation media off the Microsoft site on to a USB drive.

I have tried to boot off the USB several times, but without success. When I start up the laptop I press F10 to get the boot menu and I choose the USB drive from the list. When I do I get these lines at the bottom of the screen and eventually the Windows logo appears with a progress circle at the bottom that spins a few times and then stops. After a moment I get a blue screen with an unhappy face that says the system has encountered an error and needs to restart.

I have tried using both USB ports on the laptop with the same results. I have even tried downloading the installation media on two other USB sticks, but the results are the same. I have tested these USB drives on the laptop (when I'm on the desktop) and they work just fine - they just don't work when I'm trying to boot from them for some reason.

If anyone could give me some advice or suggestions on what to do here I would appreciate it.

To do an non-destructive upgrade, either mount the ISO, or open the bootable USB device, and double-click on setup.exe in the root folder.

The only time you would boot from the USB drive to do an upgrade is if you were doing a clean install, which would wipe all the existing personal data and programs off the system.

If that's what you want to do and it still fails, you might try remaking the installation media again, using the suggestions from this TenForums tutorial -

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10

Failing that, try updating Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 first, before upgrading to Windows 10.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...0-34140afd0669

Thanks for the suggestions. I really wanted a clean install, but I tried clicking on the setup.exe file on the USB drives. That did not work - each time I get a little error box that says "Modern Setup Host has stopped working".

So to clean install, you'll need to boot using the USB drive, rather than double-clicking setup.exe

As mentioned above, try remaking the bootable media...failing that, update Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, and then try again.

Hello

If the boot from the stick crashes at the point where you see the Windows symbol and the rotating circle, then there is a problem with the BIOS or the drivers contained in the boot.wim of the image.

Please check with the Samsung Software Manager whether there is a new BIOS version and install it. If there is no newer BIOS, try the Windows 10 installation with a Windows 1909 image.

Friendly greetings

Sorry for any mistakes. English is not my native language

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm updating the laptop to Windows 8.1 then I'll try the USB thing again. I'll let you know what happens.

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Well I managed to upgrade the laptop to Windows 8.1, then I used Shawn's thread to create a bootable USB with Rufus. I could not get the USB drive to appear as a bootable option in the BIOS, or in the quick boot menu upon startup (F10), so I used the setup.exe from the USB drive once I was on the desktop.

It appears to be updating to Windows 10 without any issues so far, but we'll see. Maybe using Rufus made the difference. I would like to thank everyone here (especially OldNavyGuy) for all the advice. I can always count on this forum to help me out with my Windows issues.

- - - Updated - - -

Success! I got the laptop upgraded to Windows 10. Thanks to all for your help :)

idgat said:

For future reference ...
Boot USB drives created with Rufus are UEFI/BIOS "sensitive" - you would need to know the configuration of your motherboard to choose the appropriate environment to create your USB. That's probably why it did not boot correctly.


But congratulations on your perseverence and success (did it really finish up a clean install, and is there just one OS on the drive?)

Well first I got it to upgrade to Windows 8.1 and that cleaned everything out, so after that I just did what OldNavyGuy said and accessed the setup file on the USB drive from the desktop. Yes, there is just one OS on the drive now (Windows 10 Home), so the Rufus program must have done something better than what I was trying to do. I did check in the BIOS and there were options for UEFI so that wasn't a problem.