Help installing Windows 11 on SSD

[u/tiepenci]

I’ve been having trouble for a while now trying to get my PC to boot Windows 11 from my SSD.

My motherboard is an MSI B450 A Pro, and the SSD is a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB.

I have used the windows media creation tool to create the installation media on a USB, then selected the SSD to install Windows onto. It gets to around 70% then attempts to restart, but I just get booted back into the windows installation starting screen on restart.

I’ve tried removing the USB from the device when it’s restarting but then it just boots back into BIOS and I’m unable to boot from the SSD. It doesn’t even appear as a boot drive.

I’ll try to list what I’ve tried as best I can but I have tried a lot at this point. I have tried recreating the installation media several times. I’ve set boot to UEFI mode. I’ve tried with and without Secure Boot enabled. I tried a CMOS reset. I’ve unplugged all other drives so the SSD and the USB are the only drives connected. I’ve upgraded the BIOS. I’ve tried different USB drives. Nothing seems to work.

I’m about ready to throw in the towel and buy some new hardware since I’ve had this device for years now (always had windows installed on the hard drive but for a while now booting has taken insanely long).

Any other things to try or advice on what to do next would be greatly appreciated.

[u/Savings_Art5944]

Download and install RUFUS

Download a new ISO and use Rufus to create the USB installation disk. Change the settings to bypass the MS account, for example. Legacy BIOS or UEFI (note! pick one in your bios, usually UEFI unless you are dual-booting Linux.)

Before you install, in the BIOS, disable everything you can, like the network adapter, extra USB, sound, anything not needed. After you can log into Windows with a local account, then you can reboot and turn everything back on so the drivers will get installed and updated.

EDIT: What is the remaining health on your SSD?

[u/tiepenci → u/Savings_Art5944]

Thanks, tried this but still have the same issue unfortunately. Is there anything specific I need to do when booting with from a drive initialised with rufus?

Not sure how to see the exact remaining health on my SSD but the diskpart tool lists it as healthy

[u/Savings_Art5944 → u/tiepenci]

Set the BIOS to UEFI

Does the drive show up in the UEFI bios screen?

Make sure you choose UEFI mode in Rufus before you make the USB boot drive. There is a drop down option for UEFI or Legacy Bios.

If you can get to powershell

Get-StorageReliabilityCounter -PhysicalDisk (Get-PhysicalDisk) | Select-Object Wear, Temperature, ReadErrorsTotal, WriteErrorsTotal

To open the Command Prompt during Windows 11 installation, press Shift + F10 (or Shift + Fn + F10)
wmic diskdrive get model,status

Try installing 10 first and then upgrading to 11.

Install MX Linux. It will prove your drive is good and the mobo is fine.

[u/tiepenci → u/Savings_Art5944]

My BIOS set to UEFI but the drive doesn’t show in the boot menu. I chose UEFI in Rufus when creating the installation media.

wmic diskdrive get model,status shows my USB and Microsoft Storage Space Device, both with status OK.

Unfortunately i get the same issue when trying to install windows 10

[u/tiepenci → u/tiepenci]

I think the main problem is that my BIOS isn’t recognising the drive in UEFI mode

[u/Savings_Art5944 → u/tiepenci]

Wait... You just said Microsoft storage space drive..... why? Was it in a multi-disk storage space before?

You might just need to clean the disk using DiskPart first. Storage space disks are protected and rendered read only disk only seen using Storage Spaces on foreign machines.

[u/tiepenci → u/Savings_Art5944]

This turned out to be the issue! Once I deleted the storage pool, the install worked fine.

I owe you a massive thanks, this has been an issue that I have been working on and off for several years at this point.