I'm facing a puzzling problem while trying to install Windows 11 on my NVMe drives. Even with my years of experience, this one has me scratching my head! It seems like it might be a failing NVMe drive, but I'm not seeing any errors reported. I've tested the drives using Linux and Windows tools like nvme-cli and chkdsk. Here's what's happening:
I have two NVMe drives in my PC. I created a Windows 11 Pro installation USB using the Media Creation Tool. When I attempt to install Windows 11 to NVMe Drive #1, the process completes 100% in the first phase, then reboot occurs, and during phase two it stalls at around 40%, resulting in a blank screen. I have to reboot manually, and then the install finishes.
I thought it might be the installation media, so I wiped NVMe Drive #1 and installed on NVMe Drive #2, which worked perfectly. But when I wiped NVMe Drive #1 again and tried to reinstall, I encountered the same issue. Interestingly, I've discovered that for one partition on NVMe Drive #1, the installation fails, while it succeeds on another partition. Additionally, using an older version of the Windows 11 installer does not cause this issue at all. I've tested other operating systems like Fedora and Ubuntu on the same NVMe without any problems. I'm confused because I had Windows 11 on this NVMe previously without issues, so I don't know if this is a problem with the new installer or if there's something wrong with the initial space on the NVMe.
2 Answers
Could you share the specifications of your NVMe drives and your motherboard or PC model? Also, which step are you on when the screen goes blank? Windows keeps logs during installation—check them out, especially:
- C:WindowsPanthersetuperr.log for installation errors.
- C:WindowsPanthersetupact.log to see what happened during setup.
- C:WindowsINFsetupapi.dev.log to review driver installations.
These logs might provide some insights or at least a direction. If you copy some text from the end into an AI tool, it might make sense of them for you!
My specs are: Ryzen 7 5800X3D, RTX 3070, 32GB DDR4 RAM, MPG B550M Gaming Plus motherboard.
I checked my logs and here’s what I found:
- BCD: Failed to add system store.
- Warning: Operation consumed more disk space than declared (exceeded by 16384 bytes).
- Setupact.log indicated some warnings but no critical errors.
- Setupapi.dev.log showed no issues with the drivers, so that’s a good sign.
Not sure if this helps, but it might give you some clues!
I will definitely check those logs when I'm back home. Thanks for the tip!