SSD, USB Stick, BIOS, Panic

[adamszabo]

Hey Tom,

I have some experience installing Windows 10 on a few computers, each came with its own problems, so these tips might help. So I assume that your new SSD is brand new and nothing is on it, and your HDD had your old windows with your backup files.

I always created my install USB stick boot drive with Rufus: https://rufus.ie/ here is a video explaining how to do it, its very easy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk_7In5HEBQ

Once you have that, just have your SSD in the computer and remove your old HDD for now. If you cannot format the SSD to install windows 10 on it, it could be for a few reasons, the computer does not recognize the SSD, so when you turn on the computer press DEL of F8 to enter the bios setup/menu, and there find the SATA options and switch the SSD drive mode to AHCI. For me I can find it in Advanced -> SATA Mode. There I can select from AHCI, IDE, RAID.

You might also find somewhere the keywords, UEFI and Legacy mode and try changing those to see if it helps.

Another problem might be that the SSD already has a partition on it, even though its very small, so in the windows setup make sure you delete all partitions it finds, then click format, then create a new partition and it will allow you to continue and install.

Good luck!

[Spogg]

Ooh yes! I forgot about setting the SATA mode to AHCI in the BIOS.

My excuse is that I only ever had to do that once about 7 years ago when I upgraded my PC to SSD. On other (more recent) PCs and laptops it just worked.