I'm restoring 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 setup stops at "Select location to install Windows 11." Both the renewed hard drive and the existing NVMe drive appear in the HP diagnostics, but neither shows up properly in Windows Setup, and the Next button stays unavailable. I also can't delete or format the listed partitions. I previously tried formatting Disk 0 as GPT, but afterward the USB installer was no longer detected. I've already tested the NVMe successfully and am checking the hard drive now. What should I change so Windows Setup recognizes the internal drive and lets me install?
3 Answers
Don’t try to install Windows onto the USB itself. Boot the installer in UEFI mode, then at the drive-selection screen press Shift+F10 and use DiskPart. Be very careful to select the correct internal disk, since this erases it: run `diskpart`, `list disk`, `select disk X`, `clean`, `convert gpt`, and `exit`. Refresh the drive list afterward. If the internal disk still doesn’t appear, the issue is probably the storage-controller driver rather than the partition format.
If the drive is listed in Setup but the partitions are locked or the capacity looks wrong, delete every partition on the intended target until it becomes unallocated space, then select that unallocated space and click Next. If Windows refuses to delete them, DiskPart’s `clean` command is the usual fix. Disconnecting the other internal drive temporarily can also prevent accidentally installing to the wrong disk.
HP desktops can hide the drive from Windows Setup when the BIOS is using Intel RST, RAID, or VMD mode. Check the BIOS storage settings and either switch to AHCI, if the option is available, or download the matching Intel Rapid Storage Technology/VMD driver from HP and load it with the “Load driver” option in Windows Setup. Diagnostics can still detect the disk even when the installer lacks the controller driver.
Installing Wi-Fi or LAN drivers won’t help with this particular screen. Windows Setup needs the storage-controller driver first, and it has to be extracted so the installer can browse to the folder containing the driver files.
That makes sense. I was confusing the USB boot media with the drive Windows should be installed on, so I’ll make sure the internal disk is selected before cleaning anything.