clean install guide w/o windows?

Hi guys, I just got a Sager from Xotic but they botched my order and sent me one without a windows and drivers already installed so I need to do all that myself. It's kind of annoying, but they said they have the key for me and that I just need to find a way to install windows into the computer myself.

The only problem is that I only have a Chromebook and a smartphone on me, no windows machines to be able to follow the clean install guide which requires the win10 media creation tool. Is there anyway I can boot windows without that creation tool?

I've downloaded the win10 ISO from link on the clean install sticky...but not sure where to go from there.

Also, the sticky suggests I don't have any other drive in the laptop before continuing since it would slowdown boot time- should I then try to take it out from the SAGER? Anyone know if this would ruin my warranty?

Thanks!

Also...I -might- be able to get my hands on a macbook air later on today, but that's about it...not sure if that makes a difference :/

 

If Xotic is the one who messed up your order, then they should overnight you a bootable flash drive at no charge.

If they can't or won't do that, then you should be able to follow this guide to create the media on the Mac:

 

When I discussed the order with the rep I made it clear it should have Win10 installed (even sent an invoice), but I'm not 100% sure that when I actually made the order that I didn't have a lapse in consciousness and mistakenly checked for them not to install anything...they said they'd snail mail me a flash drive though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Anyway, thanks man, will try that method out, any other ideas, throw em at me!

 

taking out the other drives won't void you warranty as long as you do your part which is, do not wear socks to avoid holding static charge while working on the computer and keep your feet on the ground. Preferably, also wear an anti-static wrist band.

You never wanna have more than one drive while installing Windows otherwise the Windows setup will copy the boot files to the second drive.

BUT, there is a way around that since you have a clean system with nothing on ANY of the drives.

1) Let us assume that you have a 512GB SSD where you want to install Windows and 2 HDDs in the system, just an example.

2) while at the Windows partition selection in the setup wizard, open the command prompt (detailed in the guide) and run disk part

3) now, select drive 0 then run the CLEAN command

4) do the same for drive 1 then drive 2

5) now only create a partition on the drive you are installing Windows on, which is the SSD in this example

In this scenario, Windows will NOT copy the boot files to the secondary drives even though they are connected, why? because you ran the CLEAN command on them, thus, they are now not initialized as MBR nor GPT

So when you reach Windows and go to Disk Management, it will prompt you to initialize them as MBR or GPT (choose GPT for faster boot initialization)

In the future though, if you were to format again, if the other drives did have data on them, then you MUST disconnect them because now they are active and ready to be used so Windows WILL put the boot files on them if it sees them

 

woah, super handy! thank you, will keep this in mind when I get the flash drive in the mail

 

@Phoenix

hm, so I finally got the flash drive today from xotic and I followed the guide and everything but got this error:

we couldn't install windows in the location you choose. please check your media drive. here's more info about what happened: 0x80300001

any ideas?

 

you need to run the diskpart / clean command as per the guide then create a new partition

also, you need to ensure you are booting off the USB in UEFI mode

Finally, if the USB wasn't created to properly support UEFI then it won't work

This is how it's done using RUFUS:

 

@Phoenix

ah, thanks! yeah I think 4 might be the problem xotic probablly didn't set up the flash drive for UEFI

 

yeah in that case the only way to install Windows is to boot off the USB in non UEFI mode and also disable UEFI in the BIOS and enable CMS. Not worth it IMO just get a properly formatted USB Flash disk and do it right

 

yeah, thanks man