I'm trying to reinstall Windows from a USB installer plugged into a rear motherboard port. The computer reaches the blue Windows Setup screen and begins installing, then restarts as expected. After the initial progress stage, it gets stuck on a spinning circle and repeatedly reboots instead of continuing to the Windows setup process. I've already restored the BIOS to default settings and confirmed that UEFI mode is enabled. What should I check to stop the installation from looping?
2 Answers
Check the BIOS boot menu after the first restart and make sure the primary drive you’re installing to appears as a bootable UEFI device. A damaged or incomplete installer can also cause this, so recreating the Windows USB with a freshly downloaded Windows 11 media image may help.
During setup, remove every partition from the target drive until it shows as unallocated space, then select that space and let Windows create the required partitions automatically. Leaving old system or boot partitions behind can make the computer boot from the wrong location and cause the installation to loop.
I deleted all the partitions until the drive showed as available or unallocated space, so the old partition layout shouldn’t be causing it.
Would recreating the USB with freshly downloaded Windows 11 installation media be enough to fix that?