Clean reinstallation of W11 problem and solution

[pikapp]

The PROBLEM
After performing a clean install of Windows 11 25H2, Windows Setup did not contain the specific drivers compatible with the keyboard, trackpad, or most importantly the wireless network adapter used by my Pavilion.

THE HISTORY
After the install, automatic restart, and booting into Windows, Windows Setup started automatically. There are three steps where you must click to acknowledge the country, keyboard layout and then get connected to WIFI and I could not select anything without the keyboard or trackpad. I plugged in a USB mouse I had thought about throwing away several times over the years and was able to make two of these selections. This brought me to the wireless set up screen and clicking on install drivers resulted in the search finding no drivers. Using an old laptop I had also thought about getting rid of over the years, I logged into HP support (you can go in as a guest), software and drivers, entered my product ID, selected my OS as Windows 11, selected my version of Windows as just 11 since Windows 11 25H2 was not an option. This logged me onto the Drivers page. Scrolled down to the latest Realtec RTL8xxx WirelessLAN Drivers, downloaded that file. You actually you wind up with a file named sp144390.

I transferred that fie to a USB drive and back at the wireless setup page clicked on install drivers, navigated to the file on the USB drive using the USB mouse and selected it. Windows Setup stated it still could find no drivers. Wasted two hours with HP‘s chat bot set up a call back with HP support. In the meantime, just fooling around, I put the drive back into the other PC, double clicked on the file and the installer stated it wanted to copy this file to a folder called SWSetup on the C: drive. I checked SWSetup and it was empty. Fine, the file extracted to a folder with the same name (sp144390). I moved this folder to the USB drive and attempted to install drivers by selecting the folder. Windows Setup search again ended with the same result, no drivers found.

Continuing my journey looking inside the now extracted file folder sp144390 is a folder named src, inside src is a folder named Drivers, inside Drivers is a folder named RTWLANEDriver, inside RTWLANEDriver are four more folders two of which were Win10X64 and Win10X86. Knowing that my computer was a 64 bit PC, I opened folder named Win10X64. That folder had no sub-folders so I thought this might be the place. I selected all the files in the Win10X64 folder, copied them, created a new folder on the USB drive named “sp144390 Drivers” and pasted all the files into this new folder.

THE SOLUTION
Clicking on install drivers and navigating onto the USB drive, into the previously extracted sp144390 Drivers folder began the installation of the wireless driver. WOW. The PC sprang to life, asking for my network name and password. It immediately went online connected to Windows and started a very long process of updates and all the drivers from Microsoft.

THE SUMMARY
Obviously Windows Setup cannot see anything that is not at the “root” of a folder, because if what you need is in a sub-folder it it might as well not be there.
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Three things to do before a clean installation.

1.Backup everything you want to keep. This seems obvious, but I had several pages of notes on Notepad I used to paste text into ALOT of things. I didn’t copy these out to text documents. OOPs. Gone. Think about picking up a cheap, used USB mouse. Clean it and throw it in a ziplock. Toss it in the closet just in case. Seems this IS one of the drivers Windows Setup always has access to.

2. Right click on Start, select Device Manager, scroll down to Network Adapters and copy the name of your adapter into a notepad document and onto the USB drive. On the HP site scroll down to Driver-Network. You will still need the name of your specific adapter since there may have been more than one available. There were nine files in my case, one by another manufacturer. I used the one with latest release date. If your PC is over five years old you may want to use an older driver, if there is one, for compatibility. Download it, extract it to SWSetup, I guess you could specify any location you want, like the USB drive, since it is just for copying. I may have only needed the WIN10X64 but, just in case the installer went out into other parts of the main folder, I just kept the whole thing.

3. Go into Settings, select System, scroll all the way down to About. This will show you all the specs on your PC and your current version of Windows, this will show you if your PC is a x64 or x86 machine. I copied these into the notepad document and will have it and the driver folder for next time.

I think HP could just jack this solution into their chat bot and make this process a whole lot easier for normal human beings. Of course one day the bot may just get tired of answering all our stupid questions over and over and just launch the missiles. Either way you wont have to worry about this problem again.