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Windows 10 clean install on M.2 SSD with UEFI BIOS

By on Saturday, November 16, 2019

I was trying to perform a clean install of Windows 10 and after 2 days of struggle, managed to get it working (of course I took a backup of the entire hard disk first). For the lucky, having UEFI BIOS and going through the Windows 10 install correctly the first time is a blessing. You have my respect. But for the remaining unlucky few, please read on..

There are two types of partitioning within hard drives. GPT and MBR. An explanation of the two modes is beyond the scope of this article (I might add more details later however, please keep visiting my blog ;-))

For now, MBR is legacy mode and GPT is the new kid on the block. GPT works very well with BIOS’s which have UEFI enabled. However getting to make this work using the latest BIOS on my ASUS ROG RAMPAGE VI EXTREME was suffering beyond measure. In the end, after going over probably 100’s of links, the following method worked.

  1. Disable UEFI in the Motherboard’s BIOS
  2. Disable Fast Boot as well in the Motherboard’s BIOS
  3. Disconnect all other drives from the computer other than the SSD you are planning on installing to
  4. Start Windows 10 installation using an USB stick (containing the Windows 10 ISO files)
  5. Once installation starts, Click Shift+F10 to go to command prompt
  6. Type in the following commands (THIS WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING ON YOUR HARD DRIVE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED):
    1. diskpart
    2. select disk 0
    3. clean
    4. convert mbr
    5. create partition primary size=10000
    6. assign
    7. active
    8. list volume (make note of the drive letter assigned to the 10GB Volume created in step 5)
    9. exit
  7. Once you come back to the command prompt which will look like X:\Sources and assuming that your USB drive has been assigned the drive letter D:, type the following:
    1. xcopy d: c:/e/h/k
  8. Once file copying finishes, remove the USB drive, close the command prompt, close the installation and reboot the computer again
  9. Go back to the drive selection screen, select the remaining Unallocated disk space and begin your windows installation. All will be well.
  10. Once installation has finished, go to command prompt as an administrator and follow the steps provided in the link below to convert your drive to GPT

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-move-bios-uefi-windows-10

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