About a month ago, I installed Linux Mint from a USB drive and formatted both of my SSDs. I now want to reinstall Windows 11. I downloaded a Windows 11 ISO, wrote it to a USB drive with Etcher, and booted from it. The installer starts, but it asks for storage or media drivers and does not show my SSDs in the drive-selection screen. In Command Prompt, opened with Shift+F10, the diskpart "list disk" command can see both drives. I have also encountered messages saying that a required media driver is missing and that the boot configuration data is missing or corrupted. I tried downloading drivers for my motherboard, but I may not have loaded them correctly. My hardware is an Intel Core i7-13700KF, ASRock B660 Pro motherboard, and GeForce RTX 4060. What is the correct way to create the installation USB and get Windows to recognize the drives?
3 Answers
Check the motherboard firmware settings for RAID, Intel VMD, or similar storage-controller options. If RAID/VMD is enabled and you are not using a RAID array, disable it and try the installer again. Another option is to download the correct Intel storage-controller driver from the motherboard manufacturer's support page and load it from a second USB drive when Windows Setup requests a driver.
Create the installer again using Microsoft's official Media Creation Tool, or use Rufus from your other Windows PC to write the ISO. Etcher is not always the best choice for Windows installation media. Then boot from the newly created USB and perform a clean installation. Since the SSDs were already formatted, make sure anything important is backed up before deleting or recreating partitions.
The fact that diskpart can see the SSDs suggests the drives themselves may be fine. The problem is more likely the way the bootable USB was created or the storage mode selected in firmware. Recreate the USB with the official tool, boot it in UEFI mode, and at the partition screen remove the old Linux partitions before installing Windows to the resulting unallocated space.
Related Questions
How To Get Your Domain Unblocked From Facebook
How To Find A String In a Directory of Files Using Linux