B850 Tomahawk No drives shown installing windows 11

[afsmit12b202ab]

Just setup a brand new B850 Tomahawk max wifi, I cant get windows 11 to see the internal M.2 NVME drive to install onto.
As a test I installed Ubuntu, installed with no issues, saw everything and works great.
Have the latest windows 11 ISO on a bootable USB drive, boots up but then stops asking for drivers as no media found.
Grabbed all the drivers from the MSI site and pointed it at them all, but still no media found.
Am in AHCI mode, UEFI etc.
Single NVME in the motherboard.

No idea why widows 11 is not wanting to see media.

Am I missing some strange driver? Would expect windows 11 to at least see the drives.

 

[citay]

BIOS is up to date? What SSD model is this?

 

[jak24]

There's no drivers or anything needed.

On first boot I check some BIOS info - like temps etc - and if stable update to latest BIOS - but the BIOS version on B850 isnt really an issue with installing Windows either and default settings were fine too.

I then run memtest off of USB with EXPO off then on and then Ubuntu run off USB (not installed just off USB) for a while again to check stability and hardware devices OK before moving to Windows. I actually used the onboard video for initial steps - only fitted GPU later.

Then create a Windows install USB from Windows media creation only - no ISO etc involved

If the nVME is correctly fitted - does it show in BIOS ? - its imposs for it not to be seen by Windows installer - even if Ubuntu was installed to the NVME then installer should still see it.

The only glitch I had IIRC was it wouldnt restart on the first Windows install restart step until I removed the USB

 

[citay]

Yes, the best way to create the Win11 installation USB is through the Media Creation Tool, no doubt. Actually, if you created it via an ISO on a Macintosh for example, then this exact issue can happen, that it doesn't see the drive. Perhaps the same thing can happen when it's created via Linux. But it's definitely worth a try to redo the installation media, letting the Media Creation Tool prepare it on a Windows PC.

Then, I recommend to use the latest BIOS version, and if the drive shows up under System Status in the BIOS, it should also be visible to anything else.

 

[afsmit12b202ab]

Just setup a brand new B850 Tomahawk max wifi, I cant get windows 11 to see the internal M.2 NVME drive to install onto.
As a test I installed Ubuntu, installed with no issues, saw everything and works great.
Have the latest windows 11 ISO on a bootable USB drive, boots up but then stops asking for drivers as no media found.
Grabbed all the drivers from the MSI site and pointed it at them all, but still no media found.
Am in AHCI mode, UEFI etc.
Single NVME in the motherboard.

No idea why widows 11 is not wanting to see media.

Am I missing some strange driver? Would expect windows 11 to at least see the drives.

Thanks all for the replies and ideas.

So in the end, just corrupt usb install media I had been given.

Did go through and upgrade bios etc, reseat everything, redo the cpu/cooler gunk, redownload every driver again. But in the end, it was just the install media was corrupt.

Solution as work Mac does not allow USB access, was to setup a iVentoy (PXE boot) on NAS docker and remote booted the machine across the wifi, this worked.