Windows Installer Can't See Local Drive

[ComputerDave]

Many of our clients have us set up Windows on new computers; sometimes, we use imaging software such as Acronis or Macrium or just a fresh installation using a bootable flash drive. We do this to work around getting the bundled-in products such as McAfee and, more importantly, avoiding the Microsoft account requirement. Lately, there's been an issue with new computers where we cannot see the local drive from our Windows installer or imaging software like Macrium. We've even removed the local drive and tried to reformat it externally via other Windows computers and even Linux, only for it to be unreadable. I initially thought the drives were coming Bitlocker encrypted out of the box, but that isn't the case either.

 

[britechguy]

Windows 11 requires a minimum drive size of 64GB to allow installation to begin with. Your drive capacity is just way too small.

 

[ComputerDave]

Windows 11 requires a minimum drive size of 64GB to allow installation to begin with. Your drive capacity is just way too small.

Yes, sir. What you're seeing are two flash drives, not the local drive.

 

[britechguy]

Have you tried reinitializing the recalcitrant drives?

 

[ComputerDave]

Have you tried reinitializing the recalcitrant drives?

Like reformatting? We've even tried installing an entire new drive, and the results are the same.

 

[Markverhyden]

Does it show up in BIOS? Have you changed BIOS to Legacy?

 

[ComputerDave]

Does it show up in BIOS? Have you changed BIOS to Legacy?

Oh, that's good. Yes, the drive is showing in BIOS. Also, it will boot from the factory image. No, it is not in Legacy.

 

[timeshifter]

You didn't mention this, but did you try the Load Driver link?

 

[ComputerDave]

You didn't mention this, but did you try the Load Driver link?

In the past, we had an issue similar to this with computers that had an Intel processor, which we could fix by doing what you've described and using the "Load Driver" button to install Optane Memory drivers to get it to recognize the drive. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with this issue.

 

[timeshifter]

I have encountered the situation you’re describing quite a few times in the last year or so. Generally, the way I resolve it is to figure out what drive controller that system is using and manually download a driver from the manufacturer and put it on a disk and access it during the set up by loading the driver as shown in your screenshot.

 

[Markverhyden]

Are these OEM's or white boxes?

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yep means you need to load the installation driver for the NVME, get it from the MFG's site and slip a copy on your USB stick, click the load driver button, click on it, and move forward.

 

[lan101]

I have encountered the situation you’re describing quite a few times in the last year or so. Generally, the way I resolve it is to figure out what drive controller that system is using and manually download a driver from the manufacturer and put it on a disk and access it during the set up by loading the driver as shown in your screenshot.

Yep just had this yesterday with an asus gaming laptop. Needed the Intel RST driver from their driver page extracted to the flash drive to windows 11 install. I tried the generic intel one first and that didn't work.

 

[Diggs]

One thing I didn't see mentioned here, is if BIOS is set to GPT and the drive is MBR (or vice versa?) then many times it won't show.

 

[timeshifter]

Yep just had this yesterday with an asus gaming laptop. Needed the Intel RST driver from their driver page extracted to the flash drive to windows 11 install. I tried the generic intel one first and that didn't work.

Yeah, it’s happened on a few Dells for me lately. Finding the correct driver after you’ve gotten it from Dell is a chore. There are so many folders under what looks like the correct driver. A lot of trial and error to find the one that loads.

It’s something that comes and goes over the years. When Windows is new then almost all the hardware out there is on the boot disk. As time wears on the need to manually load drivers becomes a thing again.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@timeshifter, and with the whole annual feature release thing we have going on with Windows 11.

The next feature release has new drivers. Systems we have to muck with this year, may not require it next year. And so the world turns!

@ComputerDave Got a make and model? If it's a Dell, the service tag would be perfection. Someone can look it up and tell you where to find it specifically, once you have the bread crumbs this is easy to fix forever.

 

[timeshifter]

If you can boot into the factory Windows you can use Device Manager to get the info you need for the drive controller. On the machine I'm sitting next to now the storage controller is "Intel RST VND Controller 467F" and if I get the properties and go to Details then select Hardware IDs I see the Vendor is 8086 and device is 467F. Knowing those to bits makes it easy to find a driver that will work. The value is actually PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_467F&SUBSYS_0BE01028. But you only need the 4 digit vendor and device codes.

 

[Sky-Knight]

If it's Intel Rapid Storage of any sort:

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Driver Installation Software with Intel® Optane™ Memory (10th and 11th Gen Platforms)

The Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) Driver (18.7.6.1010.3) supports the configuration and enabling of multiple features.

www.intel.com

once you've got it downloaded you do this:

SetupRST.exe -extractdrivers .\drivers

The files you need will now be in the drivers folder next to the EXE. Copy those to the Windows setup exe and click the load driver button to use those.

The instructions are in the readme associated with the driver download, search for "6.3 Pre-Installation of INTEL(R) RST driver using the "Load Driver" Method."

 

[sapphirescales]

This is one of the reasons why we use images instead of installing Windows via USB. In the rare case it doesn't have the correct driver, it will blue screen, then after it tries to boot and fails 3x you can enter Safe Mode. Then just restart and it will use a generic driver, until Windows Update installs the correct one.

SetupRST.exe -extractdrivers .\drivers

I usually just right click on the .exe and use 7zip to extract all the files from it.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@sapphirescales The last time I tried that, 7zip failed.

I just tried it again, and the output wasn't useful. I'm not sure why or how... but it doesn't work on this.