loosing my mind

XWrench3

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so, trying to make a LONG story short, i am trying to install windows 10 on a new to me computer. i am using a freshly formatted known good 240gb ssd. but when i try to install windows, it just says it can not be installed, to look in the log files. well, i can not find any log files. and i looked. i (long) formatted it, and initialized it on the computer i am writing this, so its a known good unit. i have tried formatting the ssd in windows install as well, with no luck. after watching several you tube videos, i thought maybe the drive needed to be initialized prior to the install, so i did that and tried again. with the same result. the last time i tried, (10 minutes ago) it said that the program could not find a primary partition, and that was after formatting it. my son is off at college, and he usually finds a way to make it work, but he really cant help me know. HELP! PLEASE!!
 
A few questions....
this is a sata ssd? (not a nvme or pcie type of ssd)
Have you gone into the bios to see if the ssd drive is recognized in there yet? It must be recognized in the bios before you can do anything else.
What type of media are you installing Windows ? from? DVD or USB drive?
If it is a sata drive try another sata data cable and check the power molex to be sure it is inserted fully
 
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Have you tried using a live CD of GParted? I use it exclusively for all the HDD/SSD I use. Plus it is free.
 
[/QUOTE][/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
this is a sata ssd?
yes.
Have you gone into the bios to see if the ssd drive is recognized in there yet?
yes, it shows up.
What type of media are you installing Windows ? from? DVD or USB drive?
i have tried both, a genuine microsoft dvd, and a downloaded usb stick that my son has used several time without issues.
If it is a sata drive try another sata data cable and check the power molex to be sure it is inserted fully
i have tried 2 different sata cables, and i have tried seating the power cable several times (more like a dozen times) trying to get this to work.

Have you tried using a live CD of GParted? I use it exclusively for all the HDD/SSD I use.
what is a "live CD"? never heard of that before. and no, never heard of GParted before either. what does that do?
 
what is a "live CD"? never heard of that before. and no, never heard of GParted before either. what does that do?

A live CD is a bootable CD version of an operating system, or in this case a partial operating system. GParted is a bootable partition manager. It is very powerful, fast, and free.

Here is the site for it: https://gparted.org/

Here is the direct download link. This will open a page that has other downloads offered but just wait a few seconds and the download will start. https://downloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-live-1.0.0-5-i686.iso

Burn the image to a CD using Nero, ImgBurn, or whatever you prefer.

Here is a video tutorial on using GParted. The guy walks through making a bootable thumb drive and then how to use GParted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0czAJwEbtFs
 
well, i FINALLY got windows to ALMOST install. it had to restart after installing updates, and i forgot the GParted disk was still in the drive bay. so it started to run that again, which screwed up the process. so the next time,i left the usb stick in while it restarted (it did not say to remove it), which brought me right back to the beginning process. so on that try, when it needed to restart, i pulled the (windows install) usb from the port, and it brought me to a black screen telling me to insert a boot device and press any key. what kind of magician do you have to be to get windows into a computer????? i am so stressed!
 
your bios is probably set to boot the drive with your Windows install first and that is why it wants to restart the install. Go into your bios and set the hard drive as the first device and then the optical drive (cd/dvd player) then the usb port last. On a lot of computers you can also select one of the F keys to select the boot device. Usually F9 or F10...ect. depending on the pc. Some newer HP's have you tap the ESC key first.
 
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