How to load the necessary drivers to a new hard drive

[resistencia]

How old is your windows 10 ? did you download the latest version of windows 10 from the Microsoft website and create a new USB installation ?

[marneo]

"How old is your windows 10?" I don't know where or how to check that. "Did you download the latest version of windows 10 from the Microsoft website and create a new USB installation?" Yes. I created a bootable USB Windows 10 installation flash drive with the Microsoft media creation tool at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10?msockid=399a0214610f66c7394d17e860896731 2 days ago and that is what I had plugged into the problem machine.

[resistencia]

test the disk, when turning on the laptop press the F2 key several times, select the disk, run the test and check if it is approved or has a failure ID.

[marneo]

I assume by "the disk", you are referring to the brand new disk/hard drive I just installed. I've already pressed the F2 key to run the diagnostics test of the new hard drive and it passed.

[resistencia]

Use diskpart, see this link for initialize new disk

Micro Center - How to use the Diskpart Utility preparing to install Windows

[marneo]

Thanks again Resistencia. I will give this process a try tomorrow. The one instruction which has me a little gun-shy however is Step #3 which says "Type list disk and then press enter on the keyboard. This will show a list of numbered drives in the system starting at 0. Carefully check for the disk number that is to be cleaned." If I see for example a Disk 0 and a Disk 1, how will I know which one to select to be cleaned?

[resistencia]

disk 0 is where windows is installed, it is the main disk, I think you should have only one disk, I do not think you have two disks, at least you have not indicated that in your query.