Computer Stuck In Weird Loop

Okay, I'm back. The washer will be an easy fix, if only computers were so...But I think you may turn me into a geek yet
Do I click Convert to GPT on the panel to the right to start?

 

Thanks, that's what I was confused about.
I converted to GPT (what is GPT anyway?) and now it says it is "Disk 0, Basic GPT", I went back to this post and right clicked the unallocated area to click Create...but now I can't click create! My options after right clicking here now are:
Surface Test
Properties

And the options on the right panel have changed to only the two above as well. So now how do I create a primary partition?

 

That's fine, I'm sure my friend wants to use my computer for a bit anyway. Have a good night!

 

Just had an idea:
We can access command prompt through Hirens, and it is able to detect the new hard drive. Could I follow the steps in the video you provided to work on the hard drive through command prompt while booted here instead of to the Windows USB?

 

Finally home! This may be a dumb question, but here it goes.

On the video, he has a * under GPT by his drive. Ours does not, it is blank under both Dyn and GPT. The first step was to clean the drive, so I did that, then he converts to GPT. I was just following it step by step, so I cleaned it.
Now I'm wondering if I unGPTed it during the cleaning, or if I hadn't really converted to GPT when I thought I did, since there was no asterisk by the GPT from the start (but he had one from the beginning, and still converted it to GPT anyway).

Since you said to skip this step since we already did it, I bet I'm just overthinking it. But I'm wondering if you think this means I need to convert to GPT, or just in case, would it hurt anything if I converted to GPT again?

Thanks for explaining the difference between MBR and GPT, and providing the link. I like it when things make sense, it helps me remember and know what I'm doing. You're good at making all of this interesting.

 

It says it was successful, so no harm done anyway. Continuing...

 

Now we're adding the drive letter. When I list the disks, it does not show drive letters. Should I go somewhere and find out what letter Hirens thinks it is today (yesterday it thought it was C and U) so I don't take its letters? If I name her new hard drive anything but C, would she have difficulty down the road having a strange computer with a C drive that is not C?

 

I tried that, it says Virtual Disk Service Error: The specified drive letter is not free to be assigned.

Can we change the letters in the others (the 2 for the Hirens USB is all) so C is free?

 

Or maybe we could finish setting up the drive under a different letter, and then change it once windows is up and running and we can get to it better (with no other interfering drives inserted to hog the letters)?

 

Okay, we are M So now I've left DiskPart, and now we're formatting, about 3:40 into the video. He says he does /p:1 and you can do a higher number to increase the passes but it takes longer. I'm not sure what we're doing here, but taking longer could be better and mean more thorough? Do you think I should do p:1 like he is?

 

Okay, it is going. He says it will take a bit.

It's getting late. I tried to leave Hirens up overnight once, and it didn't last, I had to reboot. I don't know if I can just quit it in the middle of fixing her drive, but he says the next thing we do is call it Windows and then exit out, simple enough. So if I get far enough to close the command prompt will it be okay to shut down the computer for the night? Seems trying the windows installation again would be next, so this may be a good stopping place before I get stuck with another question, you think?

 

Okay, thanks. It's 22%, I'll keep watching it.
Thanks for your help!

 

The hard drive is successfully formatted and ready to go. Let me know if I go back to Microsoft's instructions or if we need to do something else.

 

No worries, I ended up busier than I expected yesterday anyway, and wanted to give you time to research if needed. I'll start working on it now. It seems we're getting close!

 

Well we're stuck. It still does not detect the new hard drive, I attached a picture. I don't know why Hirens knows it's there, but Windows can't tell. I hit Refresh, and it did not help.

At the beginning her cursor still was not there, so I couldn't click to agree that all information would be lost. I plugged in her mouse and that worked, maybe we'll have to download a driver for her mouse pad or something if it doesn't come back when we're done.

I'll leave the screen as it is in the picture until we figure out what to do.

 

I can plug the windows installation USB into my computer and it won't automatically start trying to install windows?

 

I got brave and tried it, and it successfully copied to the USB without wiping my computer. Now attempting to boot my friend's computer to the USB again...

 

I'm not sure if I did it right, so I attached a picture with the browse options. I selected the sources folder and it says no drivers were found. Unchecking "Hide drivers that aren't compatible with this computer's hardware" made no difference.

 

It seems my friend is probably right, and Lenovo does not measure up to IBM at all.

Something happened this time, but I'm not sure what. If the SSD is here, I don't recognize it. Do you see it? (again, unchecking "hide incompatible drivers" made no difference)

 

I had the idea of listing the disks in the command prompt and seeing if it showed up now since we formatted it, but it does not.

 

Again, there is no way I'm messing around with the BIOS without the OK from my best geek friend, but I found this .

It makes little sense to me, and I don't know if it even applies because I'm pretty sure there's no Novo button (whatever that is) that can be pushed with a paperclip. But in working on these computers I keep running across something like Lenovo IM Controller, so I wondered if it applied to our situation in someway and might be helpful.

 

My best geek friend says:

I am uncertain of everything. Let's see if I have any issues...

 

Intel VMD Controller was there, and I changed it to Disabled. This made SATA Controller Mode appear, and it is already AHCI, which seems good.

Then the instructions say "Make sure Boot Mode is UEFI". How do I make sure of this? I see nothing about the boot mode on the Configuration tab, and it didn't say to change tabs. I thought the Boot tab would make sense, but nothing clearly says "Boot Mode". I don't see anything like this under any tab, is there something else I should be looking for?

It also says to enable Secure Boot. If I remember right we disabled that a while back, but now that we have a new hard drive its okay to enable it again, right?

 

It said to make sure the boot mode was UEFI, and I don't know where to look to make sure. Do you think it may be by default anyway?

 

It worked! The SSD shows up now. There was an error selecting it like the video said there might be, so I'm going back to see what he did about it.

 

So far so good, Windows 11 is installing...

 

Going good so far. It's asking me to sign into a Microsoft account. We've never used one, and have always skipped this. It's not letting me skip it. Do you know a way to finish up without making an account?

 

I guess its getting late. I confidently unplugged the router, then realized I couldn't talk to you...
I was going to ask if there was a way to just disconnect my friends computer from the wifi, but then while I was waiting for the internet to come back up it finally took me to the "Let's connect you to a network screen" so I was going to continue with your instructions.
Then something weird:
I was able to hit Fn+Shift+F10 to get the command prompt up, but when I tried to type in the command none of the keys would work. I was prepared to tell you that her keyboard isn't working any better than her mouse pad is, but then realized I'd just used the keyboard to pull up the command prompt, so that's not the case. Why can't I type now?

 

It's working now, hang on...

 

You can go if you need to, it seems like its letting me continue, and even working better than it was, her mouse pad is back in business too. (it seems I just needed to click the command prompt window before trying to type before it would take, strange). So far it let me skip the sign in portion, thanks!