I'm refurbishing an older Omen 45L desktop and replaced its original drive with a renewed hard drive. I'm trying to install Windows 11 from a bootable USB, but the installer stops at the "Select location to install Windows 11" screen. Neither partition allows me to click Next, and the installer won't let me delete or format the existing partitions. The drives appear in HP's diagnostic tools—the original NVMe passed its test, and the replacement hard drive is still being tested—but they don't appear properly in the Windows installer. I previously tried converting Disk 0 to GPT, but afterward the USB stopped showing up as a boot option, so I had to recreate the installer. I also added Wi-Fi and LAN drivers to the USB, but I'm not sure whether that is related. What is the correct way to prepare the drive and install Windows from the USB?
3 Answers
The fact that HP diagnostics can see the drives but Windows Setup cannot use them points more toward a storage-controller or boot-mode issue than a missing network driver. Wi-Fi and Ethernet drivers won’t help the installer detect a disk. Check the firmware settings for UEFI boot mode and storage-controller settings such as Intel VMD or RAID. If VMD or RAID is enabled, either load the correct storage driver from another USB during setup or switch to AHCI if the existing installation is not needed. Also confirm that the USB was created as a proper UEFI Windows 11 installer and boot it from the motherboard’s UEFI boot entry.
Windows Setup usually won’t enable Next until the target drive has a compatible partition layout and enough usable space. Boot the USB in UEFI mode, then at the drive-selection screen press Shift+F10 to open Command Prompt. Run diskpart, then use list disk to identify the correct drive by its size. Select it with select disk X, run clean to remove the old partitions, and then convert gpt. After that, close Command Prompt, refresh the disk list, select the unallocated space, and click Next. Be very careful with the disk number because clean erases the entire selected drive.
That makes sense. I was trying to format individual partitions instead of clearing the whole target disk, so I’ll make sure I select the replacement drive by its capacity before using clean.
Don’t try to install Windows onto the USB itself. The USB is only the installer, while Windows should be installed to the internal drive. If the replacement drive is unusually small or reports the wrong capacity, let the diagnostic test finish and verify its health; a failing or counterfeit drive can also cause setup to refuse the partitions. If it passes, recreate the installer with Microsoft’s official Windows 11 media tool and boot it in UEFI mode.
The old NVMe may still be installed, so I’d disconnect it temporarily while installing to the replacement drive. That prevents Setup from placing boot files on the wrong disk and makes it much easier to identify the correct target.