can't see drives

[WDWillis]

A friend brought this laptop to me and it had the HP logo, and the spinning wheel.

They said it went into setup repair and wasn't working still.

When I tried loading windows 11 setup from a USB, it showed me no hard drive.

I ran diagnostics and it showed the SSD as fine.

the bios screens are below

I have tried replacing the SSD with another 256GB Western Digital, and it shows in the bios the same (as one drive though, not two) but it still doesn't ever show as an available drive to install to. sometimes it will show me the USB stick...

I've tried the Windows 11 and Windows 10 USB install sticks.

When plugged into an external enclosure, the factory SSD shows up. i deleted the partitioning from it, but it still shows as 2 drive in the laptop in the BIOS as shown here.

I'm just trying to get a new copy of windows 11 installed now to be able to use the laptop again, and can't seem to figure out what needs disabled, or enabled to make that happen.

I have tried with and without secure boot enabled

[Wu77 · Accepted solution]

Try to update your RST DRIVERS ....

STEP 1 — Download the Latest Intel RST F6 Driver

You must download the F6flpy version (this is the one Windows Setup understands).

Download from Intel

Search for:

“Intel RST VMD F6 driver”

Get the most recent version (18.x, 19.x, or 20.x depending on your system).

The file will look like:

f6flpy-x64.zip, or

f6flpy-x64-vmd.zip

These contain the iaStorAC.inf / iaStorVD.inf needed for disk detection.

STEP 2 — Extract the Driver

1. After downloading, tap the ZIP file.

2. Choose Extract.

3. You should see a folder named something like:

f6flpy-x64

Inside you must see:

iaStorAC.inf or iaStorVD.inf

iaStorAC.sys

.cat files

subfolders

If you see these, the driver is OK.

STEP 3 — Copy the Extracted Folder to a Second USB

1. Insert a second USB flash drive.

2. Create a folder called RST (optional)

3. Copy the whole extracted folder into the USB so the structure looks like:

USB:\RST\f6flpy-x64\iaStorAC.inf

Do NOT copy only the .inf file. Copy the whole folder.

STEP 4 — Load the Driver During Windows Setup

1. Boot your laptop into Windows installation.

2. When the HDD doesn’t show, click:

> Load Driver

3. Browse to the second USB.

4. Open:

RST → f6flpy-x64

5. You should see one or more controllers:

Intel(R) RST VMD Controller

Intel Chipset SATA/PCIe RST Premium Controller

6. Select it → Next.

Your HDD/SSD should now appear.

[tk_srq]

@WDWillis,

If you still have the installation problem after trying Wu77's suggestion, you can use HP Cloud Recovery Tool which creates a bootable recovery usb drive which restores the storage drive to a factory state.

This HP document shows how to use the recovery tool, with the cloud recovery software download link included.

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool in Windows 11 and 10 | HP® Support

When you run the recovery tool on another PC, you'll be prompted to enter your product number, which is 544Q1UA#ABA.

Two drives you see in the BIOS are a 16 GB Intel Optane memory and a 256 GB M.2 NVMe SSD. The Optane memory is embedded on the M.2 SSD disk.

Intel RST storage controller drivers pair up the two drives to create a RAID formation to accelerate the performance of the M.2 SSD, but the Windows installer doesn't have them hence you need to supply them to the installation setup in order to detect the SSD drive to install Windows on.

The recovery usb will install Windows and all necessary drivers including Intel RST VMD drivers.

[WDWillis]

This worked, I had to download, and extract the drivers to the root of the USB stick, as it wouldn't accept them in the folder. It was the one found on HP's site for this computer, third one down I believe.

The ones downloaded from third party under that exact name did not work.

I had to turn secure boot back on, and download a new Windows 11 media creation tool/thumb drive to make it work.

It was all the more frustrating that the trackpad didn't work until i got into windows and was able to install that driver.

So it IS now working... Thank You for the help!

[WDWillis]

This was my next step, and might have been quicker and easier than downloading a most current windows 11 installation, and tracking those drivers down.