Fresh install of Windows 11 from USB 24H2 - no drives found

I'm trying to do a fresh install of W11 on a brand new Acer laptop that came with W11 with all the regular bloatware. For some reason, I can't get the USB install stick to find the hard drive. I'm used DISM to inject the Intel RST drivers, and when I check, it appears the drivers are injected, but when I boot with the stick, there's no drive showing until I manually add the Intel RST VMD Managed Controller 09AB driver - then the drive appears and I can install. So I can work around it, but in W10, I could inject the drivers with DISM and didn't need to manually load them. My steps so far.

Dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:C:\WinWork\iso\install.wim
Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:C:\WinWork\iso\install.wim /Index:6 /MountDir:C:\WinWork\Mount\
dism /Image:C:\WinWork\Mount\ /Add-Driver /Driver:C:\WinWork\Drivers /Recurse /ForceUnsigned
dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\WinWork\Mount\ /Commit
Then I copied install.wim to the flash drive. No good.
But when I do DISM.exe /image:C:\WinWork\Mount\ /Get-Drivers /all /Format:Table - the Intel RST VMD Managed Controller 09AB driver is listed.

So I thought, maybe the boot.wim needs it installed, so I did this:
Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:C:\WinWork\iso\boot.wim /Index:1 /MountDir:C:\WinWork\Mount\
dism /Image:C:\WinWork\Mount\ /Add-Driver /Driver:C:\WinWork\Drivers /Recurse /ForceUnsigned
dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\WinWork\Mount\ /Commit
Then I copied boot.wim to the flash drive. No good.
But DISM.exe /image:C:\WinWork\Mount\ /Get-Drivers /all /Format:Table shows the driver is listed.

So clearly I'm doing something wrong, and it's probably something obvious I'm overlooking - any help would be greatly appreciated.

boot.wim /index:2

There's two WinPE images in boot.wim.
Windows PE (index 1) is provided for reference, but Windows Setup (index 2) is the image actually used to boot from the install media.

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs. It will help us to help you

When you boot from the Win 11 installation drive, you're booting from WinPE and WinPE needs the driver to see the drive.
In other words, you have to slipstream the IRST driver also into boot.wim index 1 (install) and boot.wim index 2 (repair)
The driver on Install.wim will be used only after the first reboot

This link may be useful:



This link has steps for VMD:

garlin said:

boot.wim /index:2

There's two WinPE images in boot.wim.
Windows PE (index 1) is provided for reference, but Windows Setup (index 2) is the image actually used to boot from the install media.

Click to expand...

Holy smack, I knew I was missing something simple. Thank you very much!

Megahertz said:

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs. It will help us to help you

System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums

How to Fill in your System Specs at Ten Forums

www.tenforums.com

When you boot from the Win 11 installation drive, you're booting from WinPE and WinPE needs the driver to see the drive.
In other words, you have to slipstream the IRST driver also into boot.wim index 1 (install) and boot.wim index 2 (repair)
The driver on Install.wim will be used only after the first reboot

Click to expand...

Ok, perfect. So I just mount index:1, add the drivers, unmount with commit, then repeat the process with index 2?

RAID driver needed OR change disk mode to AHCI in bios which is easier.. See step 10 in this tutorial highlighted in yellow Clean Install Windows 11

Repeat the same steps with boot.wim index 2.

tsherr said:

Ok, perfect. So I just mount index:1, add the drivers, unmount with commit, then repeat the process with index 2?

Click to expand...

Yes, that's it.