Reinstalling Windows on an HP Spectre x360

[LeonidasFett]

Hi guys,

I think my laptop has been screwed up big time. Tried upgrading my laptop to Windows 11 22H2 yesterday. I let it run throughout the night and returned to it this morning. I was asked to restart the laptop, so I did. After that, it showed the new booting animation (continuous line instead of dots), but it took forever. After a while, it rebooted and showed the old booting animation again. My laptop doesn't get past this animation so I tried recovery. I created an bootable USB drive, however, no recovery option works, they all end up in an error. 

Frustrated, I decided to just reinstall Windows completely. I got to the screen where I needed to choose a drive and noticed that there was no drives in the list. After googling a bit, I found out that Windows 11 doesn't yet come bootstrapped with the 11th gen Intel RST drivers. So I tried downloading them from the HP website, only to find out that there are no drivers offered on the download page for my laptop. However, I found this article and downloaded the driver from there. So I follow the instructions and can finally choose a driver. Then I click next and the loading bar at the bottom just loads and loads and eventually runs into an error and reboots.

So now I am out of options, I literally have no idea how to proceed anymore. It feels like the 22H2 update completely screwed my laptop. Does anybody have any idea of what else to try?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

The only suggestion I can offer if you have already tried making the bootable USB recovery drive with the cloud recovery tool and using the RST driver from Intel, would be to use the RST driver from your notebook's support page.

This is how you need to do it, since the file is an exe file.

See the info at the link below.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-15-f2000-laptop-pc-series/35900344/model/35900346/document/c...

Here is the link to the driver you need...

This package contains the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver for the supported notebook models and operating systems. The Intel Rapid Storage Technology is designed to provide functionality for the Intel Storage Controllers. The driver improves Serial ATA (SATA) disk performance with Native Command Queuing.

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp135501-136000/sp135584.exe 

There is an error in that document, and that is where HP tells you to right click on the Intel driver file and select Extract to

When I ran through the steps, I don't get an Extract to option when I right click on the file.

You will probably have the same issue.  Download and install the free 7-zip file utility from the link below.

The 1st file at the top of the page is for 64 bit.

7-Zip (7-zip.org)

Then you can right click on the exe file, select 7-Zip from the menu, and select Extract to:  and let it extract the file into its folder name (sp135979), and copy that folder to your USB flash drive, and continue with the instructions.

[LeonidasFett]

Hi Paul,

unfortunately, I already tried what you posted. I extracted the installer, copied the contents to the same USB drive where my Windows installer was and loaded the driver from there. I choose the F6 folder and get two options: VMD Controller & VMD Managed Controller. However, no matter what I choose, it always ends up with "Your PC ran into a problem" after about 3 minutes of seeing the progress bar jump from left to right.

I clean-installed Windows 10 dozens of times and I have never experienced something so frustrating as this. This laptop cost almost €2000 and now it's basically a heavy paperweight.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Yes, I agree.

This does not look good at all, and I have no idea why a clean install of W11 isn't working.

Did you try installing W10?

Use this driver instead...

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp135501-136000/sp135979.exe 

You can always upgrade back to W11.

[LeonidasFett]

Yes, I get the same problem with Windows 10 installer. The problem doesn't seem to be related to whether I am using Windows 10 or 11 installer. I don't even get as far as the actual installation of Windows. At least that's what makes sense to me. It always fails when choosing the disk. 

Oddly, I tried looking at my disk using DISKPART and it's not even listed. It appears in the BIOS though. Something seems to be really off.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That doesn't sound good at all.

Did you run the hard drive diagnostics test (F2)?

If Diskpart doesn't see the drive and nothing works to install W11/W10 and the notebook ran all night, perhaps the drive has failed.

[LeonidasFett]

I didn't even know HP laptops came with an onboard diagnostics tool, which is neat. Thanks for that. Fortunately, the storage test ran through without any problems. Though this doesn't answer why the drive isn't showing up in either DISKPART or the select drive page of the installer.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Now this is a complete mystery.

Does your notebook have a 'secure erase' function in the BIOS?

Maybe if you can erase whatever is on the drive since Diskpart can't find it, you can Diskpart to see it again.

[LeonidasFett]

Nope, the BIOS for this laptop honestly is very barebones and kinda sucks. I can only do stuff like disable TPM or change the boot order.

I just had an idea. I am booting into recovery from the USB drive installer. Maybe that is why the laptop drive isn't listed. Because my USB drive shows up in DISKPART. I am not that familiar with how DISKPART behaves when it's run from an external drive and whether it can detect internal drives in that case, so I might be wrong.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You can run Diskpart from the W11/W10 installation window.

Use of Diskpart to Format Clean or Wipe Clean All Partitions on a Drive Before Windows Installation ...