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It sounds like the SSD may be failing. I would recommend to check the health of the drive to verify.Hello Brink,
Thanks for the reply.
I tried both, and neither worked. And no, there were no error messages, just the circle of dots going on and on and on... all night in one attempt. I could have worked with error messages, but zip.
But I have since solved the problem.
In making my original comment, I wondered if it would only work if I disconnected the SSD, and sure enough, I had a catch 22! I could run the Windows installer (up to the point of it asking for a drive) if I didn't have the drive connected that I wanted it installed on!
I had fired up my late father's old Windows 7 computer stored in the garage to check out the SSD drive and create the USB installer.
I thought of trying to install Windows on the drive in the Windows 7 computer, booting to the USB in that. I don't recall precisely what happened after that, but somehow in that computer CHKDSK ran, which proceeded to find huge numbers of problems (it went on for maybe 20 minutes or more), and fixed them. Well, not to the point of restoring Windows, and I think that computer refused to run the installer, but I think I tried it again in my computer (after managing to get the BIOS to recognise it again), and this time the installer was able to run properly.
(It turned out that it was formatted for Legacy BIOS, although, as I mentioned, I had tried that earlier, and that wasn't the problem.)
Now I have days of work ahead of me reinstalling applications, reinstating my preferences and settings, and so on. Arrgh! But at least it's usable again.
(Incidentally, it wasn't practicable to connect the Windows 7 computer, which didn't have wifi, to my modem, but I had used my Android tablet to download the files, and then connected the tablet to that computer to transfer the downloaded files, and discovered, almost by accident, that I could use USB tethering give the Windows 7 computer internet access via the tablet connecting to the wifi from my modem.)
How to Check Drive Health and SMART Status in Windows 10
Last edited by Brink; 20 Sep 2021 at 08:40. Reason: added tutorial link for more info