How to install Windows 10?

[TygerTung]

I bought a new SSD for my wife's laptop for Christmas and would like to install Windows 10 on it as it previously had Windows 10.

But there doesn't seem to be any way to do it! I download the Windows media creation tool and create a USB, the computer won't boot into it.

I create an .iso using the tool and it won't boot and burn it to the USB using Rufus and it won't boot. I download the .iso and create a USB with Rufus and it won't boot?

Why is Windows 10 impossible to install? It was easy in older versions.

Linux USB boots and installs fine. So the computer is still working.

It is a Acer A315-21

[king1]

any reason you're not just doing a system image or clone of the hdd. I usually use macrium reflect

Acer boot menu key is F12 or sometimes you can hit escape at the Acer logo then access the boot menu.
Does the installation USB show up then?

[king1]

UEFI is a bit different, more security, specifically secureboot, which prevents running/booting from insecure applications.

Obviously it is a bit weird the win 10 installer not booting

I presume you're getting it from here
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software.../windows10

This one is definitely what you need and always just works for me...
Maybe try a different USB port, the odd time I find the red usb ports not compatible with stuff

[TygerTung]

I'm not doing a clone for three reasons.
It is a laptop so can only fit one drive at a time. Would have to buy an external drive enclosure.
The new drive is smaller than the old one.
I want to make an install with a local account only. When we bought the machine, Windows scammed my wife into creating a Microsoft account and it makes the computer complicated with all that one drive integration rubbish.

The installation media shows up alright, it just crashes when I try to boot from it.

Have been getting it from the official site. I downloaded the .iso also from my linux machine from the official site too, then flashed it to the USB from my Windows 7 partition.

But after spending hours doing research, and creating oodles of USBs, It seems that the latest version of Windows won't install on it. Other people have had the same issue. I downloaded version 1909 (obsolete) from a 3rd party site and flashed that using Rufus and it seems to be installing OK for some reason. Can only hope that I can upgrade Windows 10 once it is installed.

MS is F**ked, I can't believe that all these newer Windows versions are so difficult to install. I would be really tempted to not bother installing Windows at all if my wife didn't need it for remote access for work. Makes me fond to think of Windows ME. Quite frustrating.

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And the laptop is from 2017, so Windows 10 native. Shouldn't really be having these issues installing.

[king1]

It is all a bit strange the happenings with this laptop...

FWIW you can do a clone with macrium, but it is a couple of steps involved
1. using Macrium to make a backup system image to an ext hdd...
2 Create the Macrium rescue USB stick
3 Swap out the HDD for the SSD
4 Boot to Macrium rescue and restore the image to the SSD, when selecting partitions, just need to shrink the main partition to fit the ssd, and any subsequent partitions

clonezilla would probably work just as well, but haven't used that for a few years now

You can avoid all the MS Account stuff by leaving the internet disconnected during install

Hopefully your 1909 is a legit version, windows should detect the license and activate automatically, and then upgrade to the latest...  If it's a cracked version you can end up with problems

The other thing I would suggest is do all your USB building on a windows machine, preferably win 10.

[TygerTung]

I did all the USB building on a Windows 7 machine as building Windows USBs doesn't seem to work on a Linux machine.

The 21H2 USB stick loads fine on my Linux/W7 machine, just not on my wife's laptop. I'm running the 21H2 Media Creation tool now on the laptop and selected the "Upgrade This computer option". It is downloading 21H2 now. This is a real nusience to have to be constantly downloading 5 GB update file as we only have limited bandwidth and will have to buy more.

[TygerTung]

Managed to get 21H2 to install by updating the BIOS. Pretty bizarre.