Cannot get past Drivers Installation screen in Windows 10 Pro Setup

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voxelstep

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Edit: Solved!
1. I needed to use a program other than Balena Etcher to get the ISO onto the USB stick. Rufus worked.
2. I needed a new USB stick. Bought a Sandisk USB 3.0.

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Machine: Beelink S12 Pro Mini PC [N100 16G+500G], running Windows 10 pro

Guides used: "Guide: NTLite for Beginners" by Hellbovine

Goal: I want to be able to quickly deploy a custom clean Windows install with my own initializations to Beelink Mini PCs.

Issue summary: I created a custom but completely basic Windows 10 Pro installation using NTLite from the Windows 10 ISO, and use Balena Etcher to load it to a USB Drive. I boot my Beelink Mini PC from the USB drive, but cannot get past the Drivers Installation step in Windows. The Mini PC I'm using has a directory of drivers in the root C:/ folder. I've tried some of them, but I keep getting the error "Load Driver > "No new devices drivers were found. Make sure the installation media contains the correct drivers, and then click OK.".

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Hi everyone. I'm a software engineer who frequently has to quickly deploy machines and websites based off of templated designs, and I would like to be able to do the same with my Windows OS installs. My end goal would be to use NTLite to create the perfect base windows image that I could apply on PCs, or even in virtual environments using something like Proxmox. For a real-world example, I would love to be able to quickly deploy an image to these Beelink Mini PCs that contains Plex, steam, emulators etc. and send them to my less technical family members to enjoy some of the fruits of my nerdy labor.

The first PC I will be testing this on is a Beelink S12 Pro Mini PC: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BVLS7ZHP . It came with Windows 10 Pro. (My ideal OS is Windows 11 home, but I'm not worried about that right now.) Inside the C:/ drive of this machine is a folder called "Driver". Here are the contents of that folder:
View attachment 11898
Here is the full view:
View attachment 11899

I got NTLite and very very quickly overwhelmed myself with ideas. I made custom images with tons of tweaks without reading a word of documentation (I told you, I'm a software engineer). After a week of being confused and humbled, I went back to the basics and read the "Guide: NTLite for Beginners" post in these forums, by Hellbovine: https://www.ntlite.com/community/index.php?threads/guide-ntlite-for-beginners.2979/ . I followed the guide to a T. I ended up with an ISO that only contained Windows 10 pro. (I didn't add any customizations, this was just the version described in the guide as "There are only a few tweaks to do in this guide, then any future editing will be up to each user to research.".) I used Balena Etcher to copy the ISO to a USB drive.

I brought the USB drive to the Mini PC and booted from it. I eventually got to this screen, with the message "A media driver your computer needs is missing. This could be a DVD, USB or Hard disk driver. If you have a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive with the driver on it, please insert it now.".
View attachment 11900
I clicked "Browse", and guessed the Driver/Chipset/DriverFiles/production/Windows10-x64 folder (I do not know which one to choose):
View attachment 11901
It loaded a ton of drivers in a multiselect window. I selected all of them (while "Hide drivers that aren't compatible with this computer's hardware" was checked) and clicked "Next".
View attachment 11903
However, I continue to get the message "Load Driver > "No new devices drivers were found. Make sure the installation media contains the correct drivers, and then click OK.".
View attachment 11904

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I'm at a loss here. Clearly the Drivers installation is a requirement before I can even think about things like removing Copilot from the start menu.

Questions to just get through where I'm at:
- I recently installed Windows 11 on a fresh hard drive for my main PC, and never had to look for Drivers. Why is this a step of the process now?
- How on earth does this work if the PC doesn't have a convenient C:/Drivers folder?
- Exactly which drivers is the installation looking for here? Am I choosing the wrong drivers from the list? Is there a way to tell Windows to just "Look in C:/Drivers and figure this out on your own"?

Questions for when I'm past this:
- When I install windows, will it delete C:/Drivers?
- I know how to add drivers to an ISO. Will adding the entire C:/Drivers folder to the Drivers panel make this easier next time?
- How do I handle installing ALL the drivers that this machine might need?
- If I want to install Windows 11 home instead of the default Windows 11 Pro that came with this machine, will that cause additional trouble when it comes to Drivers? I noticed that the Drivers folders I've been mentioning do not have Windows 11 folders.

Thanks in advance. I'm so excited to start this hobby, I can't wait to keep going once y'all help get me past this starting hurdle.
 
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You're following the normal instructions for users who don't have the ability to customize Windows images, and must specify drivers while Setup is running. Fortunately, none of this is required if you're using NTLite to integrate drivers into the install image.

1 Extract your driver files into a local folder (which you have).
2. Load your image.
3. Follow the steps in this thread: Where to integrate the Intel NVMe driver?

There is no need to keep external driver folders on the ISO, unless you're in an IT setting where multiple PC models need to be serviced, and you want to keep a catalog of distinct driver sets.

For most home users, building an install image which has extra drivers doesn't really impact the system, or really take up much space. With the notable exception of bundling the NVIDIA driver set, which is hefty on its own. So you could bundle drivers for all Beelink PC models in the same ISO, as long as they don't conflict.

The basic concept behind NTLite is when you make a list of pending changes, NTLite tracks them and can be saved as a preset XML file. If you load a clean Windows ISO, then a saved preset can be applied again to reproduce the same changes as a template. You can make copies of a preset (it's plain XML), and change up your edits, before save a new preset.

After changes are applied, NTLite resets and no longer tracks your previous edits.

For a simple change control, you can 'diff' the two files. If you're new to the modding, just do controlled batches of image edits, so you can reflect on if the changes did what you expected or didn't. And when you're stumped, just feel free to ask questions.
 
garlin , thank you so much for the reply. I hadn't really connected what the boot.vim meant, I now see it's two separate kind of WIM images that are in the same parent ISO, and copying the Drivers to that WIM is needed so that they can initialize during boot.

However, I solved the issue, and it's a crazy one. I started really looking into the error -- "A media driver your computer needs is missing. This could be a DVD, USB or Hard disk driver. If you have a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive with the driver on it, please insert it now." and "No new devices drivers were found. Make sure the installation media contains the correct drivers, and then click OK.". It seemed like the issue was with my USB drive, not anything else.

Sure enough, I bought a new 64GB Sandisk USB 3.0 drive -- and also used Rufus instead of Balena Etcher -- and the installation immediately worked properly. I don't know why my 128GB Samsung 3.1 drive was throwing the error, it's 5 years old and is normally plugged into my car as a USB audio source.

Thanks again for the input. This was weird! But now that the OS is finally on my machine, I can continue.
 
Despite what a lot of users swear, Balena Etcher isn't supposed to be used for Windows ISO's. They even share that in their FAQ.
Use Rufus instead.
 
voxelstep said:
...I bought a new 64GB Sandisk USB 3.0 drive -- and also used Rufus instead of Balena Etcher -- and the installation immediately worked properly...
Click to expand...
My guide uses Rufus and instructs users on how to convert a non-bootable and otherwise "broken" drive into one that works for Windows installs. If you follow Step 2 on the old drive without skipping anything or going off course, does it now work properly like your new drive?
 
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