When we go to buy a new computer we can choose two options. The first one is to buy it with Windows installed and activated, which allows us to save time, and the second is to do it without an operating system, allowing us to save a lot of money and use the difference, for example, to improve the hardware. Installing an operating system on Windows is relatively easy, just create an installation USB, plug it in and boot up your PC, everything should be automatic. However, there are times when this is not the case, as we will see.
The laptop we bought was a Lenovo IdeaPad 3, although it seems that this same problem can also be reflected in other brands of computers, such as HP. And it is that the blame for this seems to be the virtualization technology of Intel processors. What this technology does is that the NVMe SSD is detected as if it were a RAID, controlled directly by the Intel chipset. And by doing so, the Windows installation wizard is unable to detect the hard drive.
Troubleshoot and install Windows
To solve this problem, and to be able to continue with the installation without problems, what we are going to do is deactivate the “Intel VMD” function from the PC’s BIOS. To do this, the first thing we must do is, with the PC turned off, enter this configuration. So, we press the power button on the PC and continuously press the F2 key (although it may vary, depending on the model and brand) until we enter the classic blue BIOS screen. If with F2 we cannot enter, we can try it with the Fn + F2 key.
Within it we go to the “Configuration” section, and we will locate the ” Intel VMD Controller ” option. We select it, click on it, and configure it as “Disabled”.
When doing so, we will see a new option called “SATA Controller Mode”, which will appear as AHCI. With this, everything will be ready. Now we go to the section on the right, to “Exit”, we save the changes made in the BIOS, and we restart the computer. We can also accept the changes and exit using the F10 key.
Now, if we have the Windows installation pendrive, we can start with the installation. And, when we get to the hard drive selection section, we will see how, now, our NVMe SSD appears, as well as its partitions.
Mind you, the trackpad may not work during Windows setup . We can complete it without problems using the keyboard (we move with the arrows and the tab, select with space, and accept with “enter”), but the best thing, at this point, is to connect a USB mouse to be able to install Windows 11 without problems on our new PC.
Alternative solution
If we do not want to disable this option in the BIOS/UEFI of the computer, there is another way to solve this problem. To do this, all we have to do is download the Intel Rapid Storage drivers from the laptop manufacturer’s website, unzip them, and copy them to the Windows installation USB.
In this way, when we get to the disk selection section, and we see that the drive does not appear, we can manually load the drivers from the USB, using the “Load driver” option that appears and, automatically, our NVMe SSD will appear. in order to continue with the installation. If we have doubts, the driver is inside a folder called “dchu-VMD”.
