I'm having trouble setting up Windows on my laptop even after resetting the drives and formatting them.
I'm having trouble setting up Windows on my laptop even after resetting the drives and formatting them.
I think I woke up this morning with more frustration than usual. The 11th Intel laptop seemed sluggish, so I cleared the drives and started over. Since I don’t keep important files on it, reformatting was a good idea. I’d done this before on my desktop and successfully added two new SSDs. But when I pressed the reset button, it went dark and didn’t recognize any storage besides the USB used for Windows. I ran the recovery tool, but it couldn’t find anything. I moved both drives to my desktop, where they were detected and I reformatted them as NTFS. After transferring them back, the laptop still wouldn’t locate them. I tried resetting the BIOS to factory settings, but it didn’t show up. Installing chipset drivers on a USB didn’t help either. Eventually, I went to Geek Squad, who asked for payment or a credit card—options were running out. I’m hoping someone can help before my LAN party on Friday. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Laptop model: Asus Tuf F17 FX706HE
Have you checked other compatible storage options for this laptop? It might be a hardware problem with the motherboard, the connector, or the power rail for drives.
I've experienced a similar situation before. If the drives appear in your bios, meaning they're detected and powered on, you might need to install specific drivers. For older systems or Windows setups, the drivers aren't included by default. Are your drives GPT (Dynamic) or MBR (Basic)? Every GPT drive I've used had problems and required drivers, whereas MBR installations generally worked fine during Windows setup. You can easily switch from GPT to MBR, and a quick search will provide clear instructions. As far as I understand, newer Windows installations have addressed this problem.
The drives are accessible, yet when I press the search for drivers option, they become readable but Windows blocks installation. I've already attempted to install the Intel Rapid Storage driver, which didn't resolve the problem.