unable to do virgin w10 install to samsung nvme m.2 drive

Windows 10 pro (if it ever installs), i9-9900kf chip, MSI MPG z390 Gaming Plus mobo, 64gb ddr4 ram, EVGA 850 watt power supply with a nasty coil whine, Samsung 970 EVO plus 2TB

I'm still struggling to get my DAW working and have given up trying to do a repair install, it simply can't be done for reasons I don't understand at all. But I'm going to have to reconfigure so many things to get the DAW functional, it probably isn't really much of time saver.

So I do the whole media creation thing to a usb-drive. Remove all other drives except for the Samsung, boot, go through the screens until I get to telling it where to install. It sees the virgin drive, single partition and when I try to select it, it gives me an error message (sadly, I didn't write it down) which amounts to it saying the ssd drive is the wrong format. But it won't let me reformat the drive into what it wants. So I'm stuck.

What is the key here that I'm missing? Is the 2TB too big for Windows, do I need to format it into something smaller -- and, if so, what's the maximum size that Windows can deal with for a boot disk? Is there something else that's bleeding obvious that I'm not remembering to do?

Is BIOS set to install as UEFI?
Is fast boot and secure boot disabled on BIOS? (You can turn on after installation)
Is the Samsung NVMe M.2 drive recognized on BIOS?
How did you created the USB installation drive?
Are you booting the USB installation drive as UEFI?

Windows can be installed in two ways: Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT
To install as Legacy-MBR you must boot the installation drive as Legacy
To install as UEFI-GPT you must boot the installation drive as UEFI.

As you have a new MB, you should install as UEFI-GPT
Detach any other drives (SATA or Power cable) from the MB.
On BIOS, disable fast boot and secure boot (you can enable after installation)

During POST, press F12 (?) to launch the boot menu. You will see two options for the USB drive. USB UEFI (Name) and USB (Name). Select USB UEFI (Name).
Go to install and delete ALL partitions on the SSD till you have one and only one unallocated space and then proceed.
If you don't want to use MS account, don't enable updates or connect to the internet during installation.

If you don't mind about the data on the disk, simply delete all the partitions and proceed. If you want to install Windows without formatting, so you can have your data in Windows.old folder, then you must match UEFI or Legacy when creating the USB drive to boot as appropriate. Use Rufus for creating the drive.

spapakons said:

If you don't mind about the data on the disk, simply delete all the partitions and proceed. If you want to install Windows without formatting, so you can have your data in Windows.old folder, then you must match UEFI or Legacy when creating the USB drive to boot as appropriate. Use Rufus for creating the drive.

I don't know anything about 'rufus' . . .

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Megahertz said:

Is BIOS set to install as UEFI?
Is fast boot and secure boot disabled on BIOS? (You can turn on after installation)
Is the Samsung NVMe M.2 drive recognized on BIOS?
How did you created the USB installation drive?
Are you booting the USB installation drive as UEFI?

Windows can be installed in two ways: Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT
To install as Legacy-MBR you must boot the installation drive as Legacy
To install as UEFI-GPT you must boot the installation drive as UEFI.

As you have a new MB, you should install as UEFI-GPT
Detach any other drives (SATA or Power cable) from the MB.
On BIOS, disable fast boot and secure boot (you can enable after installation)

During POST, press F12 (?) to launch the boot menu. You will see two options for the USB drive. USB UEFI (Name) and USB (Name). Select USB UEFI (Name).
Go to install and delete ALL partitions on the SSD till you have one and only one unallocated space and then proceed.
If you don't want to use MS account, don't enable updates or connect to the internet during installation.

Bios is set to UEFI+Legacy. I have never tried doing anything in a strictly UEFI mode.

fast/secure boot are off but I will double check that when I go out again.

The device is recognized. It just won't install to it.

The usb was created by the MS Media Creation Toolkit or whatever it's called....

Mobo is set to 'UEFI+Legacy'; I don't know/understand what moving things to UEFI (only) entails so I left it to the default.

There were/are no other drives attached to the system of any kind save the USB.

I will print out your message (one way or another) and take it with me to the studio to see if any of what you prescribe will fix the problem. Thank you for your time.

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AddRAM said:

EVGA will give you another PSU.

That is if they have any

That's been a more bitter fight than you might imagine. I'm still waiting the final outcome.

If you don't mind about the data, it's much easier to delete all partitions and proceed to install Windows. It will install in UEFI or legacy mode, according to how the USB drive was created. Apart from the logo while booting, it will make no difference in Windows performance and features. I actually prefer legacy mode to create fewer partitions on disk and save a few more MB disk space.

spapakons said:

If you don't mind about the data, it's much easier to delete all partitions and proceed to install Windows. It will install in UEFI or legacy mode, according to how the USB drive was created. Apart from the logo while booting, it will make no difference in Windows performance and features. I actually prefer legacy mode to create fewer partitions on disk and save a few more MB disk space.

This seems somewhat counter to what Megahertz encouraged -- which is what I was planning to do this morning after I make sure I have all the current mobo drivers loaded on a different usb drive.

A EFI - GPT drive will have:
- EFI 100M Fat32
- MS reserved 128M RAW
- C: Windows partition
- Recovery - 600M

A Legacy - MBR drive will have:
- System 100M *
- C: Windows partition
- Recovery - 600M
* Not all has it

Anyway, a 200M in a 2T drive is nothing.
Legacy - MBR is very old tech
EFI - GPT is the modern tech

My suggestion is to install as EFI - GPT

I'm not yet ready to celebrate but the basic new install is done and I've been busily configuring and bring additional resources (more drives, more RAM, etc.) and troubleshooting (the native realtek (?) sound drivers won't install for some reason -- not a huge deal since I intend -- when the dust settles -- to reinstall my old Emu 1820m card to get to pro-level sound processing.

Not critiquing Megahertz here, but it didn't exactly play out as called. I never got to anything giving me a choice on installing when using the F12 (actually, F11); there are, at least on this MSI mobo a number of places in the bios which have an effect on UEFI implementation and they are not very clear nor is there much help available to understand different settings (which means not much has changed about bios setting in computers in the last 40 years). In the end, it took me a couple hours of forthing-n-backing until I got to where it installed. I'm sure some of my mistakes were just dumb but the job got done in the end.

Perhaps the most helpful thing out of Megahertz' post was pointing out that whatever was on the M.2 drive had to be erased so the it was ready for MS to do what it wanted to do. I ended up with the system on the M.2 drive I wanted it on and it is GPT.

I'll give this a couple of days to make sure things work out well and then I'll mark this as solved. Thanks, everyone.