Help! Login has disappeared when I boot

ship69 · 29 Mar 2017

f14tomcat said:

Is it possible to put the 128GB drive back in to test that theory? Not to install....Just to see if you get that far? If you do, the only thing left is the DVD drive and/or corrupt media.

Sorry no, not possible.

alphanumeric · 29 Mar 2017

f14tomcat said:

Is it possible to put the 128GB drive back in to test that theory? Not to install....Just to see if you get that far? If you do, the only thing left is the DVD drive and/or corrupt media.

I think both drives are mSATA. The connector on the motherboard is mSATA.

ship69 · 29 Mar 2017

alphanumeric said:

For what its worth, I do up my thumb drives with diskpart, as I mentioned earlier. They work without issue on all my PC's here at home, UEFI and Legacy BIOS. Installs will be much faster than doing it from optical media. And I've done installs with them plugged into the USB 3 ports on my laptop. I use 16 gig drives because that's what I'm have on hand. The 4 gig drives I have aren't large enough.
I'm not sure why your getting the missing driver message. If its because your using the external DVD drive, doing your install from a thumb drive should get rid of it. It its not that its likely because its an mSATA and not a regular SATA drive. Gust a guess on my part to be honest.

So "diskpart" is part of Window itself and you access it through the command line, yes?
If so where would I access it from?
It seems to me that what I need either way is a driver for the SSD, no?

Or should I try to rebuild the Windows DVD again? Or try harder to get the Flash drive turned into Windows recovery drive.
I'm starting to run out of options!

f14tomcat · 29 Mar 2017

ship69 said:

Interesting question. My PC itself had a Window 10 Pro (upgraded from Window 8). The pronblem is that I was not offered Windows 10 Pro when building the DVD. I think I was just offered Windows 10, Windows 10, and something else which wasn't relevant.

OK it seems that my DVD *might* be too small... and the the Flash drive is incompatible with Windows 7 (??). I have one more option which would be to use my (1TB) external hard disk (USB). BUT there is a lot of data on that drive and it is crucial that I do not erase that data accidentally, whilst making it bootable.

Is there anything else I could try to make the flash drive visible to the MediaCreationTool here on my Windows 7 PC?

You could run Media creation Tool choosing to create for another PC and let it create the ISO on your 1TB. Then create the thumb from that. Can't believe you can't burn a thumb on Win 7, but probably wrong.

ship69 · 29 Mar 2017

alphanumeric said:

I think both drives are mSATA. The connector on the motherboard is mSATA.

Do I need to get a special driver from somewhere do you think?

Recap: My SSD is a: 512GB mSATA Samsung (PM841 Series MZMTD512HAGL-00000 mSATA 512GB SATA III MLC Internal SSD)

alphanumeric · 29 Mar 2017

ship69 said:

Interesting question. My PC itself had a Window 10 Pro (upgraded from Window 8). The pronblem is that I was not offered Windows 10 Pro when building the DVD. I think I was just offered Windows 10, Windows 10, and something else which wasn't relevant.

OK it seems that my DVD *might* be too small... and the the Flash drive is incompatible with Windows 7 (??). I have one more option which would be to use my (1TB) external hard disk (USB). BUT there is a lot of data on that drive and it is crucial that I do not erase that data accidentally, whilst making it bootable.

Is there anything else I could try to make the flash drive visible to the MediaCreationTool here on my Windows 7 PC?

A lot of people are fooled by that. The options are Windows 10 Home Single Language, Windows 10, Windows 10 "N". The "Windows 10" option has Home and Pro on the one ISO. You select which one to install during the install, if no OEM embedded key is detected. Entering a valid key during setup will auto match to the edition its for. If you do a "I don't have a key", you get a menu to select Home or Pro. It also includes Education and Enterprise now from what I've seen. I haven't installed from the MCT ISO for a while now. I've been using my MSDN ISO's which are different.

I haven't done an install from an optical drive in a dogs age. I have seen reports on Yammer that a standard DVD drive is no longer big enough, you need a dual layer drive. However, if your disk doesn't have enough space, the MCT won't let you burn to it, it will just reject the disk. From what I read.

I wouldn't use the Media Creation Tool on your external drive, it will erase everything on the drive.

I think diskpart may be your only option.

alphanumeric · 29 Mar 2017

If it is the mSATA driver you need, its the interface driver you need, not the driver for the actual SSD. You need the chip-set driver or mSATA driver from Samsung for your model.

alphanumeric · 29 Mar 2017

Calling it quits for tonight. Back is acting up and I need to go lay down for a while. Will check back in the morning and see what's up.

ship69 · 29 Mar 2017

alphanumeric said:

If it is the mSATA driver you need, its the interface driver you need, not the driver for the actual SSD. You need the chip-set driver or mSATA driver from Samsung for your model.

I'm afraid you've totally lost me now. Where would I get a chip-set driver or mSata driver on Samsung and how do I know if I've got the correct one? And what happens if I install the wrong one? (And do I need to install firmware too???)

I think my SSD is a "PM841" but I had a look online for my SSD on Samsung and couldn't find anything helpful - it was all deeply confusing. [grrr!]

f14tomcat · 29 Mar 2017

ship69 said:

I'm afraid you've totally lost me now. Where would I aget a chip-set driver or mSata driver on Samsung and how do I know if I've got the correct one? And what happens if I install the wrong one? (And do I need to install firmware too???)

I think my SSD is a "PM841" but I had a look online for my SSD on Samsung and couldn't find anything helpful - it was all deeply confusing. [grrr!]

@ship69

You seemed to be bogged down with a hardware/driver issue that is preventing the task you're trying to do....a clean install. To get past the mSATA SSD driver issue, maybe you could ask that specific question in the thread Drivers and Hardware - Windows 10 Forums , hopefully get an answer from people who frequent that thread and may have a solution. Then come back here.

It's not thread bumping. It's going to a specific resource looking for a specific fix. No need to repeat all this thread, just the pertinent questions about what/how to get the drivers you need.

It's only a suggestion.