<< Solved >> No luck getting Win10 installed on 2nd SSD, help...?

[Tazling]

I've spent all day on this and am getting nowhere...

Step 1: I bought a Win10 license key and DL'd the iso Win10_1909_English_x64

Step 2: There's a Windows tool for making bootable install media, but since I have no standalone Windows machine and Parallels Win10 apparently can't reformat usb devices, I followed this guide:

How to Make a Windows 10 USB Using Your Mac - Build a Bootable ISO From Your Mac's Terminal

Most new PCs don't come with DVD drives anymore. So it can be a pain to install Windows on a new computer. Luckily, Microsoft makes a tool that you can use to install Windows from a USB storage drive (or "thumbdrive" as they are often called). But what if you

www.freecodecamp.org

to make a bootable Win10 install USB stick.

Step 3: boot the USB stick. this usually works: I do get the blue windowpane graphic and then the Windows Installer dialogues. if (at the clover boot selector) I boot from the microsoft efi on my boot disk, I get good high-res graphics. if I boot from the usb stick, I get low-res fuzzy graphics. is this meaningful?

Step 4: ... the usual ritual ... select language, type in license key, select Custom install, stare at list of disks. so far so good.

Step 5: carefully identify the target SSD. Unfortunately I can't find any way to disable internal SSDs in the BIOS, so I have to be very careful indeed. Both my internal SSD's are nominally 500GB and it would be easy to get confused. But the MacOS boot disk is recognisable because of the amount of space used on its EFI partition.

Now, after this point I have tried all kinds of things, because no matter what I do with that SSD in the way of formatting and partitions, Win10 will not install. I get as far as "Copying Windows Files 0 %" and a long pause. Then I generally get one or the other of:

Windows detected that the EFI partition is formatted NTFS. Reformat to FAT32 and install Windows again.

Windows could not prepare computer to boot into next phase.

The variations I've tried seem endless, but they mostly come down to:

1) format target SSD with MacOS GUID partition map, so it has an EFI partition. Leave the rest of the drive as one big partition. When in the Win10 installer disk list, delete the big partition so that it becomes "unused space" then target the unused space for the Win10 install. This usually leads to message 1 above.

2) delete ALL the partitions on the target drive so that it's all one big unused space, and target that space for the install. I read online that Win10 will create its own partitions as needed. However, this usually leads to message 2 above.

If Win10 wants the USB drive formatted FAT32, it's out of luck because there are files in the iso too large for FAT32. I formatted it exFAT.

I was going to try burning a DVD from the iso and booting from that, but wouldn't you know it, Win10 is too big for my 4GB DVD-R media. Will have to get some denser writable DVD media to try that.

I've tried enabling CSM because of reading a post somewhere that Win10 install is somehow incompatible with UEFI. I've tried to boot the "cdboot" option from Clover (iso?), which just hangs.

So basically, I'm at my wits' end. Other people have done this, so surely I must be making some very elementary error. Been at this for about 10 hours (with breaks) and getting nowhere. So I'll leave it for tonight and hope that someone can point me in the right direction. Could I have a corrupted iso? I DL'd from Microsoft official site...

The good news is that so far, I have not damaged my MacOS boot disk and am still bootable; though I notice with some puzzlement that at some point in the BIOS boot device menus, the EFI partition was no longer labeled "EFI blah blah" but just the brand/model of the SSD. It doesn't seem to matter.

[UPDATE:] just couldn't rest without trying One More Thing... managed to get Parallels Win10 to "own" a USB stick sufficiently to run Rufus... Rufus successfully made a UEFI-only USB installer from the iso. I reformatted the target SSD again, back to GPT so it has an EFI partition. This time I turned off all SATA devices. So there were only the 2 SSDs still alive. This left the target win10 device (PCIe SSD) as disk 0 in the win10 installer table, and m.2_1 (MacOS boot) as disk 1. So you would think that the Win10 installer, dumb as it is, would use disk 0, the first disk in its list...

I did the same old dance steps: deleted the large partition, left the EFI partition alone, pointed the installer at the large Unallocated Space on the target disk. Same old result. Copy Windows files 0%, pause, then "Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into next phase."

Do I really have to physically remove M.2_1 to get this install to work? Crikey, that means tools, and pulling cards, and disturbing the goo on its heatsink -- what a mess -- it might even be buried under the CPU cooler (have to revisit the board layout). Good lord, I do hate&despise WinDoze. Maybe it would be easier to carbon copy clone the MacOS boot disk to the PCIe SSD (which is easier to remove being a bus card) and try putting Windows on the m.2_1 ssd?

It is hard to believe that a simple OS install can be so difficult...

 

[Going Bald]

If you can boot to the Win10 installer page, shift+f10 to get a command window and use diskpart to erase/format the SSD:
diskpart
list disk //determine the drive that is the Win10 to be drive, say it is disk 1
select disk 1
clean
convert gpt
list disk //verify there is an * under Gpt for the Win10 drive
select disk 1
create partition efi format fs=FAT32 label="EFI"
create partition primary format fs=NTFS label="Win10"
exit
exit

You should now be able to install to the NTFS formatted part of the drive by selecting it in the drive selection window.

 

[Tazling]

@GoingBald, many thanks for something new to try! I do somewhere have a bit of licensed S/W that allows MacOS to format a volume NTFS, if memory serves. Could I achieve same effect by formatting the non-EFI disk partition NTFS before shutting down macOS? Just curious; I am going to try your recipe above, Right Now.

[some minutes later...]

Well, I got a different error message anyway but still no dice.

Shift-F10 did get me into a CLI window.

I found I could not do all the disk format stuff in one cmd line (Win10 maybe older than what you are running?), but had to do create partition type size=size_in_mb first, then select new partition number, then a separate cmd format fs=fstype label=volname quick. Fortunately there's a live iMac at my elbow with browser always open and it was easy to find win10 diskpart doco.

First image attached shows what the vol list looked like before I cleaned, gpt'd (it already was) and rebuilt the target disk. Second image shows what it looked like afterwards. So, definitely had FAT32 EFI and NTFS main partition. Then, full of hope, I returned to the win10 install disk menu and selected my new NTFS partition labeled WIN10 as the target.

After a few seconds of 0% file copy, I get this interesting new message:

Windows detected EFI system partition was formatted NTFS. Format FAT32 and restart installation.

Now, I know I formatted the EFI partition fat32 on the target disk 0. And though there are -- confusingly -- 2 EFI partitions present (is the other one on the MacOS boot disk?), notice that they are both formatted FAT32 per diskpart. So where is the installer getting this silly idea that the EFI partition is formatted NTFS? Is this some kind of bug in the installer?

Third image shows what the disk looked like to MacOS after reboot. Fourth image shows that -- for some strange reason -- after Win10 made its unsuccessful attempt, that disk had two EFI partitions. Both of them were FAT32, however. It gets even stranger when I try to use EFI Mounter to inspect them. disk0s1 opens normally and looks like my Clover boot EFI. disk1s1 opens normally and looks... identical. disk1s3 throws a warning message from EFI Mounter: unexpected disk name disk1s3 (even though disk1s3 appears in the menu). attempting to mount it appears to succeed (pops up another Finder) and it looks identical to the first two.

The fifth images shows what Disk Utility thinks the WIN10 target disk looks like, partition-wise. There's one big primary partition, one 500MB or so small partition, and (WTH?) one tiny <17MB partition (Microsoft Reserved as seen in CLI diskutil list?) note however that CLI diskutil displays six partitions, but GUI Disk Utility displays only three: numbers 2 4 and 5.

Since Apple has -- shame on them -- got rid of the handy Debug mode in Disk Utility, I'm not sure how else to look at this.

And just to make my day complete, after this latest reboot I seem to have lost jpg support again in Mojave, as if the shiki boot parms had disappeared or lost their mojo. Even though I never touched Clover. WTH?

I am -- once more -- baffled. Hoping this makes more sense to you than it does to me!

 

[Tazling]

Can't install Windows 10 on m.2

I have a brand new x370 build and have updated the BIOS. I tried to install Windows 10 from the DVD drive. It does not recognize my western digital 500 GB M.2. So, I can't install Windows. Any way around this?

forums.tomshardware.com

1- The M.2 drive has to be the only drive installed.

looks like I'm in for more hassle, if this be true. hmmm thinks.... ccc the MacOS install to the more easily accessible PCIe SSD, wipe out the buried NVME disk, then I could pull the card for MacOS boot disk so the target ssd was the only disk available? it's a PITA that ASUS has no BIOS mechanism for disabling SSDs...

This is also rather interesting:

install Windows 10 on new ssd Hard Drive

Hi, i have Dell laptop - inspiron 15 series 3000. i bought it with original Windows 10 install at it's SATA Hard Drive. now , the Windows 10 load very very slowly ~5 minutes and i thought to buy SSD

answers.microsoft.com

NOTE: Sometimes Windows 10 setup can become confused if it sees a thumb drive. You might get a driver missing error or something to that effect. If you do, restart setup, but this time, when you arrive at the following screen, disconnect your thumb drive then go through Custom options. When setup is ready copy files, it will prompt you to reconnect the installation source (your USB).

 

[Tazling]

Well, I have success of a sort, but it has brought me more grief of course. Trust WinDoze for that!

I finally succeeded in getting Win10 installed on my SSD. The trick was that for whatever reasons, instructional YT videos and some other guides had skipped an apparently important step. What I remember the guides saying (and I don't trust my memory 100 percent, only maybe 90 percent) was "delete the partitions, click on Unallocated Space and Continue." The implication was that Win10 would automagically know what to do with the blank space. I tried variants of this many times and never succeeded (see above). The target disk did get partitioned, but Windows installer was never happy with the partitioning it had done.

But I found a discussion at Microsoft Forums in which someone varied this recipe with just one more step: delete the partitions, click on Unallocated Space and use the NEW button, which will make the installer set the disk up as a boot disk. THEN select the Primary partition and Continue.

So, without much hope, I tried this. And wow, it worked. I am (unfortunately) typing this from Brave browser under Win10.

Why unfortunately? Well, I was dancing in the streets at first, but... now, I can't get my Hackintosh to boot back into Clover! It will only boot into Win10, no matter what UEFI partition I set as #1 in the boot order. If I set no UEFI partition other than the MacOS one, it refuses to boot at all and sulks in BIOS. If I put the Microsoft UEFI option second, I always get Win10. Argh! I've lost my lucky Clover.

I know there's a fix for this and am about to go on a google-bash to find out what it is...

BTW I did carefully follow GB's recipe above, formatting the disk by hand. That doesn't seem to do it; only the New button in the installer (whatever the H that does) is acceptable to the next phase of the WinDoze install. Maybe it does some additional magic.

[UPDATE: SUCCESS]

How to access efi partition on windows 10?

I am having trouble accessing the EFI partition on windows 10 I tried this method in cmd (I used Administrative privileges ): open cmd as admin... diskpart sel disk 0 sel part 1 (efi part) assign

superuser.com

This worked for me (on WinDoze in Admin Shell):

mountvol P: /S

This mounted what looks like my very own EFI partition on the primary boot disk. I renamed bootmgfw.efi to bootmgfw-orig.efi ... exited the shell. Shut down. Rebooted. Set my UEFI (other OS) as option 1, Microsoft Windows Boot Manager as option 2, and said a quick Hail Mary. Was absolutely delighted to see Clover again and know that I didn't have to reinstall Mojave from scratch!

I'm not sure which Clover option now boots win10 (there are now two Microsoft EFI icons in addition to my Mojave boot drive) but if necessary, will find out empirically.

Wow. It's been a very frustrating few days. What on earth did we do before Google... actually I remember before Google. I remember before Internet our offices were lined with tens of shelf-feet of manuals, and we made phone calls to tech support and to each other. Solving weird boot problems could be a very slow business in those days.