Recent installation failed, cannot set up Windows 11 on NVMe storage
Recent installation failed, cannot set up Windows 11 on NVMe storage
Hi everyone, I recently needed to set up a PC for another purpose. The mainboard is an MSI B550-A Pro, and the storage uses a Samsung 980 1 TB NVMe SSD. I prepared a bootable ISO of Windows 11 onto a USB drive. My SSD shows up in the BIOS, but it doesn’t show up in the Windows 11 installer, requiring a driver that I expected to find. I fetched what I believed was the chipset driver from MSI’s site and transferred the files to another USB drive. When I navigate through the driver folder, it seems to recognize a compatible driver, yet when I try to install it, it says: "No new device driver was detected." I’m stuck here. It’s been a while since I built a PC, and I don’t remember needing this step before. Appreciate any advice you can offer, as searching online hasn’t helped much.
Windows 10 and Windows 11 work best with 12th and 13th generation Intel processors. Otherwise, it’s mainly for those experiences. Are there any external drives connected, like SATA ones? If yes, remove them. If not, you might need to reconfigure the BIOS to enable security modes so Windows can detect NVMe devices during installation. Secure boot is likely set, and there could be additional BIOS options on the Gigabyte board—MSI may handle it differently.
Attempted generating a bootable ISO for Windows 10, but it isn’t recognizing or installing the necessary drivers. Just want to set up the operating system.
this board seems to share issues with ASUS Prime B450 models running the 2H series of Windows 10... (1 prime m-a and 1 prime m-k) - I own two of these. Windows 10 Home won’t install properly even after BIOS updates after two years (keeps crashing). Windows 10 Pro installs and works enough to run chipset drivers... (just a guess). This is clearly based on personal experience. My basic knowledge suggests the problem might involve the USB ports controller and either AHCI or XHCI controllers.
During the initial configuration phase of Windows, pressing Shift + F10 will launch the Command Prompt. Enter the command DISKPART followed by listing disks. It should appear in the output. Verify your system settings: confirm BIOS/UEFI is up to date. In UEFI setup, ensure these are configured correctly—date/time must match, UEFI mode must be enabled, CSM disabled, XMP/DOCP/A-XMP set to Profile 1, RAID disabled, Fast Boot active, POST delay off, Secure Boot enabled. If unavailable, MSI may use non-standard names. When booting from the setup USB, select "UEFI: <USB model name>" instead of just the model name.
I discovered the problem wasn't related to ASUS, AMD or the Windows installer. I'm solely a Mac user without personal Windows PCs, and this was created for someone else—my previous machines ran Linux. I used balenaEtcher on my Mac, which somehow burned the ISO onto my flash drive in what felt like a compatibility or legacy setting. When I attempted extraction again after re-downloading the ISO from Microsoft, balenaEtcher warned me about potential issues and suggested using Windows and RUFUS instead. I borrowed a Windows laptop, installed RUFUS, extracted the ISO, and after installing it on the PC, everything functioned perfectly. I stress-tested the device for 48 hours and found it to be very reliable.