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Introduction

I have decided to upgrade my old Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 10. I downloaded the ISO file from the official Windows 10 download page as the installation media creation tool did not start on my OS. Then, I used Rufus to create a bootable USB drive from the ISO. After booting the USB drive and running the setup, the setup finished installing and prompted me to restart the computer to finish things up. However, after restarting, it kept booting the setup from the start, and the installation process repeated.

Technical Context

I have an Intel i3 Gen 4 processor, 4 GB RAM, and two hard drives in my computer. One is an SSD hard drive (~100GB), on which I am attempting to install Windows 10, and the other is a personal hard drive with my personal data and an old installation of Windows 7 Ultimate.

Problem Details

After the setup finishes the installation, it shows a dialog box saying that Windows needs to restart:

enter image description here

However, after a successful restart, it just boots back to the start of the setup. Clicking on "install" again just loops the process:

enter image description here

Attempts to Rectify and Results

From my research, I found that my computer is supposed to boot the drive with Windows 10 installed after restarting. However, it fails to do so and simply boots the USB again, which is the next option in my BIOS boot settings. I have tried to ensure that my boot priority is highest for my installation drive, boot my PC with the USB flash drive ejected and removed, and manually select the SSD as the boot option from the boot menu. However, none of these attempts worked. Enabling or disabling the Legacy BIOS Boot option did not change anything either.

Notable Observations

When I disable Legacy BIOS, my Windows 7 installation does not show as a boot option in the BIOS settings. With this setting and my USB flash drive ejected, I attempted to boot my SSD, but it only opened the BIOS settings instead of booting anything. When I booted Windows 7 and checked the contents of the SSD after installation, it showed nearly 6 GB of data, including the Windows, Program Files, User, etc folders.

Conclusion

I would greatly appreciate any assistance or guidance regarding this issue that has left me confused for hours, and how to resolve it. Admittedly, I am not particularly knowledgeable in this area of computers, so I apologize in advance for any lack of understanding or technical jargon.

Thank you.

Some Miscellaneous info

  • There is another boot option that is named "Windows boot manager", selecting it with Legacy bios boots windows 7, and it just boots up the flash drive without the legacy bios option. I was unable to figure out what was going on there.
  • During installation, I selected the "Just install Windows" option, and completely formatted my SSD drive before installation.
  • I have tried reinstalling windows from the setup, 9 times.
  • I emulated my browser to act like MacOS Safari so that the mentioned download page gave me the ISO instead of the Media Creation Tool. I doubt this would have anything to do with the issue though
  • The version I downloaded was named Win10_22H2_EnglishInternational_x64
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  • reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/jdy6wl/…
    – Gantendo
    Commented Apr 29, 2023 at 8:13
  • If you figure it out based on that reddit post, please write your own answer below ;-)
    – Gantendo
    Commented Apr 29, 2023 at 8:36
  • It's possible that Windows 10 is lacking drivers for your computer. Which model is the computer (and especially the motherboard model)?
    – harrymc
    Commented Apr 29, 2023 at 9:47
  • @harrymc My motherboard model is H81M-CS by Asus, here are more details about main board by CPU-Z
    – Zacky
    Commented Apr 29, 2023 at 10:21
  • @Gantendo Thank you for your input, unfortunately the reddit post doesn't seem to bring anything new to the table which I haven't already tried. I already did many attempts at disabling and enabling CSM (legacy boot) like I have mentioned in my post. Also the solution that worked for the OP of that reddit post only helped with cloning windows, not with fresh installations.
    – Zacky
    Commented Apr 29, 2023 at 10:23

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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About your Question and Descriptions

  1. Creating the Installation USB stick by Windows ISO and Rufus (rufus.ie is the official site) worked for me fine, always.
    => Q·2: Did you get Rufus from the official site? — If not, then do it and use that version..
    => Rufus is a digitally signed Program, but an ISO is not signed. Hopefully you verified the SHA256SUM of the downloaded ISO. The official values are displayed on the download page in the item "Verification of the Download":
Englisch (international) 64-bit 3AC5522F9DB9F4F432A1AADE69FEF268C8C0B5FD3F22D3A6987719752F8A7108
Englisch 64-bit                 F41BA37AA02DCB552DC61CEF5C644E55B5D35A8EBDFAC346E70F80321343B506

Get the checksum of your ISO by using PowerShell and compare the hashes:

Get-FileHash C:\Users\UserName\Downloads\Win10_22H2_EnglishInternational_x64.iso

Algorithm : SHA256
Hash      : 3AC5522F9DB9F4F432A1AADE69FEF268C8C0B5FD3F22D3A6987719752F8A7108
Path      : C:\Users\UserName\Downloads

  1. Not upgrading but doing a fresh install is a good idea. You get rid of outdated installations, failures and old configuration sins.

  2. Installing multiple times while instantly changing BIOS mode between UEFI- and Legacy-mode is a bad idea. By a good chance this might confuse things leading to a not bootable system.
    For the installation of Windows 10 preferable is BIOS set to UEFI mode + Using GPT partitioning. But using BIOS set to Legacy mode + Using MBR partitioning should also result in a booting system.
    A bad idea is to mix BIOS-mode and partitioning in a different way.
    => Get your installation disk clean before you start. Preferably there is no partition scheme on the disk when you start. (Windows displays this as "UNINITIALIZED")

Steps for Installation (UEFI Mode)

1. Create Installation Media

As you tell the "Media Creation Tool" does not work for you to create the installation media, you have to create it by using the official ISO form Microsoft, that you have verified (see above)

The ISO is only available by accessing the link with a non-Microsoft OS or changing the browsers "Agent String" to pretend this (Browser-plugins are available to manage this).

The bootable USB-stick will be created by Rufus.
Already here you have to decide at which BIOS-Mode your system will be installed (see screenshot at rufus.ie):
Partition scheme: GPT, Target system: UEFI (non CSM)

You've got this done already, hopefully also doing the security verification and configuration details ...

=> If you hesitate at least at one point (especially the one with the "Partition scheme" and "Target system"), then reinstall the data on the USB stick!

2. Reset your Installation Disk

The history of the past, not successful efforts should be erased to have a fresh restart.
I suppose, your installation disk for the Windows 10 installation has no other data. — Else save it on a separate disk. — After this step the disk will be empty.

To delete the partition scheme, please use diskpart.exe. This tool is available in Windows 7, but can also be accessed when booting the Windows installation media:
A the first screen press Shift+F10 to get the commandline and execute diskpart:

diskpart                                                 # start the tool

DISKPART> list disks
  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  GPT    # Be sure to IDENTIFY THE
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---    # *CORRECT* DISK.
  Disk 0    Online           64 GB      0 B        *     # (Win 10 Destination)
  Disk 1    Online         4096 MB  1024 KB        *     # Else you WILL LOOSE DATA.
  Disk 2    Online           29 GB      0 B              # <= I'll choose this one
                                                         #    Note the "Free" space
DISKPART> select disk 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> clean                                          # This will erase the 
                                                         # partition scheme rendering
Diskpart succeeded in cleaning the disk.                 # it "UNINITIALIZED".

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  GPT
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online           64 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 1    Online         4096 MB  1024 KB        *
* Disk 2    Online           29 GB    29 GB              # <= Note the difference
                                                         #    of "Free"

DISKPART> exit

3. Assure having set BIOS to UEFI Mode

Perhaps already done just before Step 2 but at least now boot into the system BIOS and change it to use UEFI.

This is also the right time to set the boot order of your disks and other boot media to the desired future settings.

4. Reboot and use the Windows Installation Media as Boot Device

Booting by the USB stick should start the Windows installation:
By

  • resetting the installation disk
  • using the UEFI BIOS
  • starting the USB stick in UEFI mode

all signals are set for the Windows installer to install Windows in EFI mode and thus using the GPT partition scheme for its system disk.

Also there should be no reason for the installer not to setup the required entry for the EFI Boot Loader correctly, that is stored in the NVRAM of the motherboard.

So good chances are given that after copying the Windows data to disk, the reboot will go for the new system disk to complete the installation.

Steps for Installation in Legacy- (CSM-) Mode

Do the same steps as described above. But have these different settings:

  1. Initialize the Installation USB in Rufus with
    "Partition scheme": MBR, "Target system": BIOS (UEFI-CSM)
  2. Set your BIOS to Legacy- (CSM-) mode
Annotation

I've see a BIOS of about 2012 pretending to be UEFI aware, but when it came to details like GPT + EFI + booting different OS installations, if persistently failed. — So a BIOS error is possible. Nowadays this should be the exception, but as you do the installation on an older hardware, it's worth to mention.

=> Be sure you have the latest BIOS Updates installed.

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  • This!!! Thank you so much, as it turns out, apparently it was indeed a bios problem. I tried doing a Legacy (CSM) install through MBR, and kept it consistent and it did actually work. Although my bios is UEFI, I have discovered that for some reason it does not actually support UEFI mode boot. I did try with MBR once before, but I believe it failed that time due to the switching between UEFI and UEFI CSM. currently typing this comment from windows 10 :)
    – Zacky
    Commented May 1, 2023 at 14:17
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I just had the same problem after upgrading the BIOS. I created a USB installation media for Windows 10, then changed the boot option accordingly.

When windows came to its finishing up stage and restated, it went back to initial screen of "Install Windows 10". Second time when it happened, I removed the USB drive during the restart process, (Dark screen) before it comes the boot option message- " press any key."

Then the set up continued and completed the final things. Hope this can be helpful to some who has same issue.

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    – Community Bot
    Commented Dec 3, 2023 at 8:40
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Remove the USB after installation is finished. Otherwise, it will boot-load the USB to start the installation process over again.

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