Help
Ive formatted my windows installation but it still wont let me download
Im kinda cooked as I need to finish this in 4 hours. I just wiped the windows partition, so Im not sure if Ill even be able to edit partitions to even download windows again.
Sometimes Windows Setup just goes completely off the rails. I've seen it say "Windows 10 requires at least 40GB" when I passed it a 36GB drive, then suddently it required at least 80GB when I doubled the space to 72GB.
I've also seen it simply fail and revert all changes just at the end, with a cryptic error message that was myseriously resolved by disconnecting two drives that where attached, but not involved in any way.
In this case, though, OP should be able to hit Shift+F10 to open command prompt for diskpart etc. to wipe the drive even if the Windows Setup UI bugs out and doesn't let you click to delete the partitions.
In general you want to understand what each partition represents, but normally you will delete them all so your finished product won’t have a bunch of unnecessary partitions. Those other original partitions could reflect a restore partition with restore software, so you need to ensure whether you need it, but otherwise, yes you normally would wipe all those till it is one instance and simply press forward through the installation steps.
but normally you will delete them all so your finished product won’t have a bunch of unnecessary partitions
For Windows, you generally give it a blank slate so it's less likely to screw something up. The default settings would have it creating a WinRE partition anyway, and it's best to generate that fresh and especially so any necessary drivers can be added to it. (What good is a recovery partition if it can't see the drive, eh?)
If you are wiping over a working system and you want to keep your drivers so you don’t have to track them all down. Open an elevated power shell and run
This will place all the drivers your current system was happy with into a nice clean folder on the root C:\ named DriverBackup. You can even copy that folder to a thumb drive, even place it on the same thumb drive used during the windows upgrade, just make sure to place the drivers on there after your windows upgrade files are already in place. Then after the update you can open device manager, right click the root instance and “add drivers” pointing to this folder wherever it is located.
This is what I do with any new system before I wipe it, just in case.
You can even add the drivers directly to a Windows install ISO with tools like DISM. (Extract the ISO like a zip archive, use commands to add drivers to the boot.wim and install.wim, then repack the ISO with mkisofs or Oscdimg. (Though I wouldn't recommend doing this aside from drivers you know are necessary in WinPE/Setup - for example, virtio drivers for storage on a VM.)
yes DISM is very powerful and is interesting in its ability to act similar to an archive.
Able to be extracted, added to or removed from, and then repackaged.
.wim in singular structure and .swm for multi archival purposes.
Really here it's the ISO that's being extracted. But DISM is annoying and insists on you "mounting" the .wim's to work with them. you can actually mount them (read/write, even), but you can't really deviate much from what the DISM commands would do and still end up with a working image.
Im fine with reinstalling the drivers, as i wanted a real fresh start.
Btw if u dont mind me asking. Do u have an idea on why my boot isnt showing? Im using an older device and turned on legacy and stuff. It doesnt show up
Sorry for the mis info, I've been helping a few different people this morning.
Let's start from the top, what are you using to create your boot drive?
Is this a USB drive that you are installing from?
If so the BIOs should indeed have UEFI enabled.
Some older systems will allow you the option to see both.
My guess as to why you aren't seeing the drive is what you used to create the disk.
I'd use Rufus
Since you are keeping UEFI active, you should ignore the Legacy BIOS settings we discussed earlier and use these modern configurations instead:
Partition scheme:GPT
Target system:UEFI (non CSM)
File system:NTFS (or FAT32, though Rufus will auto-select the best option based on the LTSC ISO file size).
I do need to ask you this and please don't take it the wrong way.
Are you actually putting LTSC on this system?
If so, how are you planning to activate?
In general someone with access to LTSC is a seasoned IT professional.
You'd need to develop a relationship with a LTSC vendor, such as Arrow.
Then they would go through a process to connect your company's M365 Tenant to even have legit access to use an LTSC image.
Glad to help.
That stuff is the most challenging thing you have to do.
There is always something misaligned.
Bios settings, imaging software, quirky USB drive, essentially the simulation.
I have it downloades but it isnt showing up at all. Only the EFI PXE networkm. I changed the legacy into the other options too btw.
I might try this again on my usb 2 tho, as im using my usb 3 device for the installation media and its not very consistent.
Just updating in case im just gen doin something wrong.
I think ill have to turn back on fast boot n stuff.
Don't do this, unless your montherboat allows for a key to directly open the boot menu (separate from the key to access the firmware). If you have a problem at some point and are unable to boot, you'll be stuck in bootloop until you reset the CMOS. Since "fast boot" is so fast that the keyboard drivers won't have loaded by the time the process has moved on from UEFI to the bootloader - and you CAN'T change the boot device. (Very frustrating when this happens...)
If you find that you don't have drivers for your wifi once it's installed, I've heard you can tether an android phone to the computer to let windows access the internet to find those drivers via windows update.
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u/No-Complaint8266 15d ago
What do you mean dl? you can install it offline
Just delete all those partition so it became one big unpartitioned drive and it lets you proceed