Windows 10 1607 install problems to SSD

[taisingera]

Here is a strange problem, although I have seen it after doing some searching online. I bought an Adata SP920 128GB SSD for a Dell L702X laptop because the hard drive is slow. The laptop has no indication that it has UEFI, and under Win10 on the old drive, it says BIOS is in legacy mode and AHCI mode. I install the SSD into the laptop, check the BIOS and it is listed. I put the Win10 USB drive in to boot, and it goes through all the steps, restarts, and then at "Getting Ready" under the spinner, after about 1 minute, all disk activity stops, and either sits there or the spinner freezes. I restart the laptop with the power button, and then get an error to start the installation again. I tried this 5 times on the laptop, doing all kinds of things: using diskpart to clean and convert to gpt, tried not reformatting the ssd and just install again, and nothing. One of the times I let it sit for 10 minutes and it just stuck at Getting Ready. I even tried recreating the Win10 USB with MCT.

Here's the thing, I put the SSD into my i3 Haswell desktop, installed Win10, it got past the Getting Ready screen and fully installed, no problem. The desktop is setup with UEFI/Legacy and Secure Boot on. The next morning I blow away the Win10 install on the old drive and try installing Win10 and it works just fine.

So, it seems I can't get Win10 Home 1607 to install on the SSD in this Dell laptop. Has anyone seen this before or have any ideas on how to resolve it?

 

[Puffnstuff]

Your bios might not support the drive fully. Are there any firmware updates for the laptop or the drive? There are instances of incompatibility with certain drives so you might want to check and see if this is the case in your situation.

 

[taisingera]

Unfortunately the Dell laptop is old and I have the latest BIOS already installed. I will have to see which firmware is on the SSD.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Could this be a BitLocker issue? Does that drive support TCG/Opal?

 

[taisingera]

According to this, http://www.anandtech.com/show/7908/adata-sp920-128gb-256gb-512gb-1tb-review
the drive does not support TCG/Opal.

 

[Ketchup]

Did you try a Windows 7 installs to make sure there wasn't a driver problem? At least that would narrow it down.

Where did you get/how did you prepare your Windows 10 install media?

 

[Puffnstuff]

When you installed 10 did you let the windows installer handle the unallocated space or did you select a particular partition to install to? If so I would try it again but this time delete all partitions and then only select unallocated space allowing the installer to handle partitioning.

 

[taisingera]

I prepared the Win10 install disk using the Media Creation Tool, onto a 16GB USB3.0 flash drive. On 4 of the 5 tries, I did delete the partitions from the previous attempt, and then just chose the unallocated space, and Win10 setup a 500MB partition and the main partition (Remember no UEFI so I don't get the other 2 partitions).

 

[Puffnstuff]

When installing did you let it obtain the latest setup files during the process?

I prepared the Win10 install disk using the Media Creation Tool, onto a 16GB USB3.0 flash drive. On 4 of the 5 tries, I did delete the partitions from the previous attempt, and then just chose the unallocated space, and Win10 setup a 500MB partition and the main partition (Remember no UEFI so I don't get the other 2 partitions).

Deleting the partitions reduces the chances of any former issues being retained. It's also possible that your MBR has become corrupted and if so then you will need to secure erase the drive and start over.

 

[taisingera]

I didn't download the ISO, I said to create the appropriate (Home x64) USB drive. Pretty sure the MBR is good because with the USB flash drive I just created, I was able to install win10 to the SSD on my desktop (was hoping to install on laptop though).

 

[Ketchup]

Considering the Intel driver support Windows 10 has, you could always try the install on the other machine and then see what happens when you put it in the Dell that way.

 

[taisingera]

Considering the Intel driver support Windows 10 has, you could always try the install on the other machine and then see what happens when you put it in the Dell that way.

I thought about doing that, but I would have to reinstall it on the desktop with UEFI shut off because the Dell doesn't support it. Also, the Dell has Nvidia graphics vs Intel HD on the desktop.

 

[taisingera]

The situation isn't a total loss because the desktop doesn't have an SSD in it, so I can use it in the desktop. If and when the drive in the Dell laptop fails, I have another hard drive I can throw in to use. This laptop is more of a watch movies and some browsing type of machine anyway, so I don't need a lot of storage for it.

 

[JackMDS]

Also, the Dell has Nvidia graphics vs Intel HD on the desktop.

This in not a problem for Win 10. If you switch between these two it will take an Extra Minute longer but the system will adapted to the one or the other.