How in the world does one boot from USB these days?!!

[sapphirescales]

@britechguy Here I made a video showing this issue with this HP laptop I have in for repair. There's nothing wrong with the hardware. The Windows 11 24H2 setup simply doesn't include the Intel RST driver required to recognize the SSD. At first in the video you can see it boots up normally into a fresh install of Windows 11. Then I boot it from the Windows 11 24H2 setup flash drive and it fails to detect the internal SSD. I simply load the correct driver while in the Windows 11 setup and the SSD shows after that.

HP Laptop SSD Not Showing up in Windows 11 Setup Fix

Here's how you fix an internal SSD not showing up during Windows 11 setup on an HP laptop

odysee.com

I uploaded to Odysee because you can upload videos anonymously.

 

[britechguy]

@sapphirescales,

Thanks. Should I need to do what you did, this video will come in quite handy. I just haven't ever needed to do this, yet. I know only too well that "there's a first time for everything" applies. I've almost certainly jinxed myself by saying it's never happened to me.

 

[sapphirescales]

@britechguy This was really common in the Windows XP days when it came to SATA drivers. The Windows XP setup didn't have most SATA drivers (though I think they added a bunch later on if you had the installer that included Service Pack 3). You had to press F6 when first starting the Windows XP setup process and load the SATA driver onto a fricking floppy disk (it doesn't support a flash drive). Most people "fixed" this issue by changing the controller mode from SATA to IDE Compatibility mode. This trick also worked when computers (especially Dells) would automatically set the SATA controller to RAID mode and you could switch it back to AHCI mode to get the hard drive to show up in the Windows Vista/7 setup. In some modern computers I think you can even switch the mode from NVMe to SATA or turn off RST or something. I don't know. Don't quote me on that. None of these methods are the proper way to "fix" it. The proper way to fix this problem is to load the correct driver during setup.

To get the driver you need to put the serial number of the laptop into support.hp.com and download the Intel RST driver. Then you can extract the .exe using 7zip. There will be a folder installed called "driver." That's where the driver is. Load it onto a separate flash drive and you can point the Windows 11 installer to it in order to install the driver. There will be anywhere between 3-50 different drivers. Which one it is is anyone's guess. It's a poke and hope sort of thing. As you saw in my video, I loaded the wrong driver at first. It was obvious that it was the wrong driver because it was labeled as an Optane driver, but not's not obvious every time. You just have to try driver after driver sometimes. It's fricking terrible. If you want to "fix" it the improper way you can try disabling Intel's Rapid Storage controller in the BIOS or try putting it into compatibility mode. Those HP crap machines don't have many options in the BIOS though so those options might not be available. The only time I've done the compatibility mode "fix" is for what it was actually intended for - to use a SATA drive in an OS that doesn't support SATA at all, like Windows 95. I used to buy tons of crappy Windows XP era Dell Optiplex's for a client who needed Windows 95 machines and I had to change the SATA controller to compatibility mode so it would emulate an IDE controller and Windows 95 could use it.

 

[britechguy]

@sapphirescales,

Thank you, again. I've filed this where I can find it later if I need it.

 

[Sky-Knight]

From an official source:

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Driver Installation Software with Intel® Optane™ Memory (10th and 11th Gen Platforms)

The Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) Driver (18.7.6.1010.3) supports the configuration and enabling of multiple features.

www.intel.com

Within there's a readme file: https://downloadmirror.intel.com/773229/readme_18_7_6_1010.txt

Search within that readme file, for "Pre-Installation"

You'll find instructions similar to this:

a. Extract driver files from SetupRST.exe:
- Open terminal in the directory with SetupRST.exe by right-clicking the directory
and selecting "Open in Terminal" or "Open PowerShell here"
- Enter the following command:
./SetupRST.exe -extractdrivers SetupRST_extracted

That's the "official" means to extract the driver. Sapphirescales, method does work, but it requires you to remember where in the directory structure the drivers live, and Intel could change it.

So we're back to a refrain we've had for decades. When in doubt read the readme!

This process is required for most systems that are 11th generation and younger, if they have an NVME. And it may change vendors if you're on the AMD side of the fence. Same process then, different vendor, and usually there's just a preinstallation kit you can download. Not sure why Intel hides theirs... it's annoying.

 

[britechguy]

@Sky-Knight

Thanks to you as well. Filed, too.

 

[sapphirescales]

@Sky-Knight Ah yes, I forgot that you told me about that method before and I even wrote it down but I forgot all about it. I've never had my method fail but if it ever does I need to remember your method!