Help formatting drive or ??? for new installation of windows

@xtal01
It is not normal. Turn off the computer, turn it on and at startup press the f12 key, if the hdd is there choose it to boot on it.

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If you formatted the partition after installation, you need to reinstall windows. And you don't have to format the partition.

itsme1 said:

@xtal01
It is not normal. Turn off the computer, turn it on and at startup press the f12 key, if the hdd is there choose it to boot on it.

OK ... just watched a few videos ... my guess was correct. When I used F12, I was booting in Legacy mode. For some reason it installed windows this way.

When I hit F2, Legacy was grayed out .. only UEFI option

Went under security and disabled PTT (I have no idea what this it) but then Legacy came up!

Told it to boot from the hard drive ... it did!

It is now finishing installing Windows.

I guess I need to read up on Legacy vs UEFI ... I might want to re-install if I did something wrong.

Thanks!

The problem is more than likely the fact that you used RUFUS to make your USB installation drive instead of just letting Microsoft's Media Creation Tool do it. I have no idea why people insist on using RUFUS. In your photo in your post #1, the screen shows a UEFI installation booting in UEFI mode (on the hard drive). Then you stated that you recreated the USB flash drive using the MBR option with RUFUS. You likely booted the USB flash drive in legacy BIOS (CSM) mode which caused Windows to be installed onto the HDD with MBR and an NTFS system reserved partition. Upon reboot, the computer is likely looking for the UEFI installation that was on the HDD before, but now it is MBR with an NTFS system reserved partition. Most computers cannot boot in UEFI mode from an NTFS system partition and need the FAT32 EFI System Partition to boot from.

You need to quit messing with RUFUS. Go to the Microsoft Download Windows 10 website and download the Media Creation Tool. Then just use it to create a proper, "MS factory fresh" flash drive, and do everything in UEFI mode, especially booting the flash drive in UEFI mode.

And I guess I was correct - you booted the USB flash drive in legacy BIOS (CSM) mode instead of UEFI mode and part of the problem was that you used RUFUS to create an MBR flash drive for booting in legacy BIOS (CSM) mode. RUFUS strikes again!

NavyLCDR said:

The problem is more than likely the fact that you used RUFUS to make your USB installation drive instead of just letting Microsoft's Media Creation Tool do it. I have no idea why people insist on using RUFUS. In your photo in your post #1, the screen shows a UEFI installation booting in UEFI mode. Then you stated that you recreated the USB flash mode using the MBR option with RUFUS. You likely booted the USB flash drive in legacy BIOS (CSM) mode which caused Windows to be installed onto the HDD with MBR and an NTFS system reserved partition. Upon reboot, the computer is likely looking for the UEFI installation that was on the HDD before, but now it is MBR with an NTFS system reserved partition. Most computers cannot boot in UEFI mode from an NTFS system partition and need the FAT32 EFI System Partition to boot from.

You need to quit messing with RUFUS. Go to the Microsoft Download Windows 10 website and download the Media Creation Tool. Then just use it to create a proper, "MS factory fresh" flash drive, and do everything in UEFI mode, especially booting the flash drive in UEFI mode.

Exactly !!!!!!!!!!

I just figured that out!

I only used RUFUS because I was following the instructions on a web page I found.

You can see in my last post, I had to disable PTT and boot in Legacy (and I honestly have not idea what all that means) to get it to work.

I will try again and do it correctly this time.

Lucky I had the day off work .. learned a lot !!!

Thanks so very much for all the help !!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike

put ptt back enabled and do what navyLcdr says, install windows in eufi mode...

Megahertz said:

You should buy a small (128 or 256G) SSD for windows and programs and install the HDD into a caddy to replace the ODD (CD/DVD drive). You will have the speed of a SSD and the space of a HDD at low cost.
Universal 12.7mm caddy
Universal 9.5mm caddy

- There are many 128G SSDs .
This FanXiang is cheap (US$16) and fast.

I dont have any experience of those dramless ssd , but have heard they are ok for this sort of thing.

Not sure what kind of tbw you can expect from the very tiny ones.

They do very cheap nvme as well. No idea what it is like.

fanxiang S501 256GB NVMe

@xtal01
The ptt option is the intel tpm approved by microsoft tpm requirements. As on my dell I had to activate ptt to have tpm 2.0. It's for safety it's important. Remember to disable legacy mode in the bios and put uefi back as before.

itsme1 said:

@xtal01
The ptt option is the intel tpm approved by microsoft tpm requirements. As on my dell I had to activate ptt to have tpm 2.0. It's for safety it's important. Remember to disable legacy mode in the bios and put uefi back as before.

Got you! I am downloading the microsoft program right now ... going to make a new USB stick ... and give it another try.

Thanks again for all the help!