SOLVED! How to install Windows 10 Pro on HP Pavilion 500-281? SOLVED!

[SkOrPn]

Hello again,

Hello, we purchased a Windows 10 Pro today and when I try to install the ISO we get a Blue Screen error over and over. I have now downloaded the ISO from Microsft about 15 times in the last 6 hours. And I have tried 6 different USB drives and almost all of the ports on the machine. The Pavilion has a fast i7-4790, 8gb of ram and a new Samsung 860 Evo SSD. NOTHING should prevent this install from happening but no matter how hard I try it just keeps giving me an error after error.

Does HP not want Windows 10 on this machine perhaps? I am at a loss. I have installed Windows 10 maybe a few thousand times in my life, but this dang HP seems to not want to run from the USB. We tried an inplace upgrade using Anytime Upgrade, and that failed, we tried the upgrade from the Media Creation Tool and that failed about 10 times in a row, and I also tried your standard ISO to burn using Rufus, and that failed also about 10 to 15 times, I lost count. 

Does HP have a direct official way to get Windows 10 on this machine please? Thanks

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Do you have W10 Home on your PC now?

If so, you can upgrade to W10 Pro with your W10 Pro product key without having to reinstall W10.

Upgrade using a Windows 10 Pro product key

1. Select the Start  button, then select Settings  > Update & Security  > Activation .

2. Select Change product key, and then enter the 25-character Windows 10 Pro product key.

3. Select Next to start the upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.

If you still have W7 on the PC, then get the free upgrade from W7 Home Premium to W10 Home by clicking on the Blue Update Now button at the link below.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

This article explains why you can still get the free upgrade to W10 from W7, W8, and W8.1.

Here's how you can still get a free Windows 10 upgrade | ZDNet

After you have upgraded from W7 to W10, go back and use the instructions I posted to upgrade from W10 Home to Pro.

[Hibb1]

Are you having trouble actually creating the bootable USB media? or is it crashing during installation?

There's no reason that the 'generic' Microsoft Windows 10 shouldn't work. Although the system does need to support UEFI / Secure boot if you are trying to install Win10 20H2.

Check in BIOS (F10) and make sure secure boot is enabled and legacy boot disabled.

Otherwise, create a bootable usb stick with the HP UEFI diags on it and run an extensive test. See if all passes.

https://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/hpsupportassistant/pc-diags.html

Obviously you'll need to create the stick on another working PC. If the unit does not support UEFI, then you'll need to install an earlier version of 10 (such as 1809) then upgrade to 20H2 through Windows Update.

[SkOrPn]

It is running Windows 7 Home Basic, or what ever it came with. I purchased a valid Pro key and have already associated it with the current OS running. However, it will not upgrade to Windows 7 Pro or Windows 10 Pro. The Windows USB installer is giving me the normal Windows 10 circular animation and then suddenly a blue screen KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED.

This machine does not have a dedicated GPU. So, is the Intel 4600 that is built into the i7-4790 not sufficient? Or did I brake something when I imaged our Windows 7 and restored that image onto the 860 EVO SSD? I also used ccleaner last year to clean it up (yes I know this app is questionable, but I used it anyway) and wondering if that might have broken something too. Either way, nothing is working.

So, today I plan to take it to my shop and try a dedicated GPU. If that doesnt work, I am going to install Windows 10 Pro onto the SSD using a different machine, then swap in the SSD back onto this Pavilion and pray it boots. If it does boot I should be able to use Safe Mode to install all of the official drivers (and the Pro key), and updated drivers. I am just running out of ideas. I have 30+ years of IT experience, but this machine is trying my patience. I have never seen a healthy machine (it should be anyway) give me this many issues with something as simple as a Windows install. Built in HP diagnosis shows all is Passed and Healthy. The 4790 is actually brand new retail only 1 year old, so is the Ram and SATA SSD. And the machine runs great with Windows 7, but we no longer want to use it for security reasons.

Any more ideas? I will add more detail later. Thanks

[SkOrPn · Accepted solution]

I have solved this issue. Apparently Windows 10 did not like the EFI format on the new SSD, which was probably something the imaging software I used on Windows 7 had done to it I am guessing. So instead of Microsoft being smart and telling me this, Windows 10 installer decided to be stupid and make me figure it out on my own. So, all I had to do was put the new SSD onto my other machine and then I used DISKPART to CLEAN the SSD. After that Windows 10 installer just worked as expected.

If curious, how I figured it out was by removing the SSD and then booting to the Windows 10 installer. Surprisingly it booted. Then I re-connected the SSD and sure enough Windows said that it could not be installed to this SSD because of its EFI format. I failed to get a screenshot. Tried using the delete function to delete the partitions, but Windows was having none of it. SO I cleaned the SSD on my main PC using DISKPART. Worked like a charm.

I now have Windows 10 Pro installed and running surprisingly well. Thank you for replying and trying to help. I will mark this issue as SOLVED!

@Paul, as I had said in my initial post, all of the "In Place" upgrade attempts was not working. I tried upgrading to Windows 7 Pro and I even tried updating to Windows 10 Home as well. None of this was working due to some error I kept getting. Besides, I had no intention of doing anything but a CLEAN install of Windows. I don't like upgrades.

Best Regards

Rod Gray