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