Help! Login has disappeared when I boot

alphanumeric · 30 Mar 2017

It used to be that all you got via the MCT was Home and Pro. I also run Education and some times Enterprise. MSDN was the only way to get those ISO's. Now the MCT gives you Home, Pro, Education, and I think Enterprise in the "Windows 10 ISO" option. For me it was quicker and easier to download multiple ISO's from MSDN. Now the MCT may be a better option. I'm going to have another go at it, I'm just waiting for the Creators Update to drop first. Then I'll be doing another round of test upgrades and test clean installs. I'll still only use the MCT to download the ISO, not to actually create a thumb drive.

ship69 · 30 Mar 2017

f14tomcat said:

I must really be missing something here. The Media Creation Tool allows for the creation of an ISO, and even allows you to create it wherever you want to. Same drive or navigate to an external and create it there. Doesn't destroy anything, just creates an ISO file. If Rufus can see the thumb and burn to it, there's the install media. I just did it.

Nope, Rufus can see my memory stick. Windows can see it. But Media Creation Tool can't. The memory stick is made by Kingston, "FAT32, Type: Removable, 29GB, Healthy". Yes I have just rebooted my PC.

[Quick Aside: What the heck is wrong with people who design these systems? Why the heck is this so hard? G*d I hate computers. Or maybe I just hate Microsoft, I can't decide.]

f14tomcat · 30 Mar 2017

ship69 said:

Nope, Rufus can see my memory stick. Windows can see it. But Media Creation Tool can't. The memory stick is made by Kingston, "FAT32, Type: Removable, 29GB, Healthy". Yes I have just rebooted my PC.

[Quick Aside: What the heck is wrong with people who design these systems? Why the heck is this so hard? G*d I hate computers. Or maybe I just hate Microsoft, I can't decide.]

@ship69

You back up after a clean install?

alphanumeric · 30 Mar 2017

ship69 said:

Nope, Rufus can see my memory stick. Windows can see it. But Media Creation Tool can't. The memory stick is made by Kingston, "FAT32, Type: Removable, 29GB, Healthy". Yes I have just rebooted my PC.

[Quick Aside: What the heck is wrong with people who design these systems? Why the heck is this so hard? G*d I hate computers. Or maybe I just hate Microsoft, I can't decide.]

It's better than it used to be. Before Windows 8 there was no Media Creation Tool. ISO's were a PITA to get hold of. OEM PC's don't come with install media. You had to resort to going to the shadier side of the Internet to get an ISO.

ship69 · 30 Mar 2017

f14tomcat said:

@ship69

You back up after a clean install?

No, I can boot up to a point off my Windows 10 DVD, but "Windows setup" says "No signed device drivers were found".

To get clear the state of play is that:
A) I have access to an 8 year old PC that is running Windows 7 x64, with Internet access.
B) I managed to download Media Creation Tool (MCT) on this PC and with it I managed to create a Windows 10 disk.
The first problem is that it may not be Window 10 Pro, but never mind that.
C) If I reboot my laptop it says "Samsung" but then fails to load windows
D) If I put the Windows 10 DVD into the external (USB) DVD of my Samsung Laptop (that was until very recently running Windows10), the laptop does see it an attempts to boot. It finds "Windows setup" which asks which language to install etc and then "Install Now" (or "Repair your computer")
E) If I Choose "Repair your computer" followed by "Troubleshoot" I get a command prompt saying "X:\sources"
F) If I enter DISKPART and then "LIST DISK", it only shows "Disk 0" which has zero bytes free, so I am assuming that this disk is the DVD drive with the Windows 10 DVD on it.

i.e. The core problem seems to be that my laptop can't actually see the SSD.

G) The other problem is that although my Windows 7 x64 PC can see my memory stick, even though I have tried using DISKPART on it, and converted it to GPT, and then rebooted that PC, MCT simply can't recognise that memory stick at all.

H) UPDATE: Having converted the memory stick to GPT, I now find that Windows 7 can no longer see the memory stick

With thanks

J

PS I have tried contacting Samsung support but they say:

"We do not provide SW support for our OEM drives. Please contact the system manufacturer."

I replied saying that they are they system manufacture, but the are refusing to reply, which is frankly pretty disgraceful.

alphanumeric · 31 Mar 2017

I was playing around with my older desktop PC today, booting from a thumb drive made with the MCT to have a look at some of the setup menus. On this PC I have to do some out of the ordinary BIOS settings to get it to boot from my thumb drive.
For some reason my Kingston DATA traveller is detected as a hard drive. Its listed in the hard drive boot menu. I'm pretty sure Windows 7 install media doesn't do this. Anyway what I have to do is set the thumb drive as the first option in the hard drive menu, then it shows up in my boot order menu.

BIOS Boot > Hard Disk Drive > 1st Drive > USB-Kingston Data Traveller.
BIOS Boot > Boot Device Priority > 1st Boot Device > USB-Kingston Data Traveller.

Then I can boot into the thumb drive. On the first reboot I have to go and undo it all and set the hard drive back as the first boot device. For what ever reason my quick boot F8 menu doesn't see the Windows 10 thumb drive. This an old motherboard ASUS M2N68.

ship69 · 01 Apr 2017

UPDATE:
OK I am now back at home and have access to a Windows 10 Pro x64 computer.

I had a brainwave and found a utility on Kingston's website that formats their memory sticks.
DTHX30 Download Kingston Format Utility | Kingston

From what I can see, Kingston had done something idiotic to the memory stick that stops certain Windows applications from being able to see the thing. [???]

Anyhow I have re-formatted it using the above utility and now (FINALLY!), MediaCreationTool.exe can actually SEE the memory stick.

Whether my Samsung laptop will be able to see it so, and whether it will contain the correct drivers for my SSD only time will tell. Watch this space.

J

f14tomcat · 01 Apr 2017

ship69 said:

UPDATE:
OK I am now back at home and have access to a Windows 10 Pro x64 computer.

I had a brainwave and found a utility on Kingston's website that formats their memory sticks.
DTHX30 Download Kingston Format Utility | Kingston

From what I can see, Kingston had done something idiotic to the memory stick that stops certain Windows applications from being able to see the thing. [???]

Anyhow I have re-formatted it using the above utility and now (FINALLY!), MediaCreationTool.exe can actually SEE the memory stick.

Whether my Samsung laptop will be able to see it so, and whether it will contain the correct drivers for my SSD only time will tell. Watch this space.

J

Hey!!! Progress! Keep chargin' ! :)

alphanumeric · 01 Apr 2017

Some thumb drives ship with utilities installed for making them secure. The more expensive ones anyway. The diskpart clean command usually gets rid of that stuff. I think my Hyper X drive had that stuff on it?

f14tomcat · 01 Apr 2017

alphanumeric said:

Some thumb drives ship with utilities installed for making them secure. The more expensive ones anyway. The diskpart clean command usually gets rid of that stuff. I think my Hyper X drive had that stuff on it?

Had a couple of Sandisk like that.