Windows VM Installation Troubleshooting#

What Was Established#

Troubleshooting guide for Windows installation when the local disk does not appear in the partitioning screen during setup.

Key Troubleshooting Steps#

1. Check disk detection in BIOS/UEFI — If the disk doesn’t appear in BIOS, it’s a hardware issue (loose cable, faulty drive, wrong SATA port).

2. Load storage drivers — Modern NVMe/RAID controllers may need drivers loaded during setup via Shift + F10 → “Load Driver”.

3. Partition style mismatch — UEFI requires GPT; Legacy BIOS requires MBR. Check with diskpart → list disk. Convert with select disk X → clean → convert gpt (or convert mbr).

4. SATA mode — Intel RST (RAID) mode can hide disks in AHCI. Switch SATA Mode in BIOS if the disk is not detected.

5. USB port — Try USB 2.0 instead of 3.0/3.1; some ports cause issues during boot.

Open Questions#

• None identified — this was a one-shot troubleshooting session.

Related Pages#

Proxmox ZFS Storage & Installation Patterns, Proxmox ZFS Storage Setup

Sources#

• ingested/chats/023-Troubleshooting Windows Installation Disk Issue.md Troubleshooting Windows Installation Disk Issue · raw/conversations/deepseek/023-Troubleshooting Windows Installation Disk Issue.json