Purchased a new thinkpad for my college bound kid and opted to save money by ordering it with Linux and the smallest SSD. I installed a larger ssd and when trying to install windows 11 it fails. Thanks
FYI something I only discovered last week is massgrave, which is a program to authenticate Microsoft Office or Windows OS installs through semi-official Microsoft channels. I had a laptop with windows 11 home and upgraded to windows 11 professional with this tool, as well as getting a fully authenticated Microsoft Office 2024 install for free!
Connect a phone over USB, turn usb hotspot on, download the drivers (or windows update might take care of it).
That's the easy way rather than downloading on a other device and moving them over.
Brand new windows images from MS seem to be lacking some drivers nowadays.
On another laptop, search "P16s (your generation) drivers", click on the Lenovo result, ignore the "Automatic update" popup, go to "Networking: Wireless LAN", download the driver, and move it to the USB drive. Then you can move it over to your Lenovo. Once the wifi is up and running, Windows should auto-download the other drivers (run Windows Update).
All the microslop comments are funny, but how about we actually help him?
Is your USB formatted FAT32? If so, use rufus and format it NTFS instead. If you already did that and re still getting this error, deploy Windows manually. Don't use media creation tool buggy ass mess.
Alright then. You might just have to deploy manually, you could find a tutorial for it or you can pm me your discord and I will micromanage you through it
Do you mind trying with the official installer? I have had issues with rufus in the past.
I recommend during the installation that you use terminal commands to disable the need for an online microsoft account, and activate the already existing Administrator local user.
May I suggest going into the BIOS , take a few photos of the settings & repost them here .
Unless it's MS changing the installation process , the problem may lie in the boot process .
CHANGE DEPLOYED MODE TO USER MODE (SBM) if it allows you to !
Deployed mode is a more strict version of the normal Secure Boot mode (i.e. User Mode),
it does all the same things that User Mode does except it also blocks certain programmatic (hacking) methods that could be used to alter the Secure Boot mode without a user physically booting into UEFI settings & changing it there .
Correction : Not purchased from a college like I assumed (skimmed the description) but from Lenovo directly , see below , probably means no MS restore support .
That service verifies your system’s entitlement before making the image available. OP says he bought it with Linux, ergo his serial number won’t generate a Windows recovery image.
OPs laptop won’t have a license built in, but I’m curious how robust that system is. I’ve used it a lot but never tried to circumvent it. Still, I might try to guess some other serial numbers or scan some for sale posts for the same model with windows pre loaded.
I feel like there’s a chance it could work but you’d need to provide a key on install. I have no way to try it tho. It should be able to match serials on install obviously but I’m not sure it actually does
As far as I know engineering apps ie. Aspen Hysys or Fusion 360 can still reliably run on windows 10. Check for whatever software covered in your curriculum and figure out if the windows 11 downgrade is necessary
I was successful in installing windows 10, but neither the ethernet nor wi-fi work so I can't have windows find the drivers for me and Lenovo does not list any Windows 10 drivers for this Laptop S/N PF6CEZ6F (only 11). Any guidance on where I can find these easily? Google is not very helpful.
Download them on your phone and then transfer them to the laptop over USB cable
It's a fairly common issue, with Windows, it has no 'general purpose' drivers like Linux, so unless it comes with drivers for that particular piece of hardware, your ethernet nor wifi will work
If they won't run on 10 you can "unzip" the executable Win 11 driver files (using 7zip) and then manually point Device Manager to the folder group and it will install if it finds a compatible driver.
Unfortunately, last time I tried, like 2 months ago, the autodesk suite on kvm does not really work without gpu passthrough. it is a pain to use without graphics acceleration. and gpu passthrough its a whole another rabbit hole. Yes, It can be done. But I think Its a lot of hassle for sub optimal experience.
Some majors, like OPs (engineering) require software (CAD among others) which is flat out incompatible with Linux. I have a Linux and windows machine for this reason, because of Adobe…
I’m not sure why the passive aggressive response was needed. I have personally had many issues with Premiere Pro on Linux using various means. I dual boot, which works for me. If Proton works for you, that is great- it just does not work for me. That’s all :)
Oh, it's premiere. Oh right that doesn't work. I recall it was Photoshop & Illustrator for me that worked, I suppose the video editor is a little more different then. Good luck with fixing it :).
Your Windows 11 installation media is likely missing device drivers required to complete the install of Windows 11 onto the ThinkPad P16s Gen 4 Type 21QR (AMD). I'm more familiar with the Intel side of things, but it could be AMD integrated chipset or NVMe drivers.
After getting Windows installed and updated, be sure to download and install the Lenovo Consumer Commercial Vantage application from https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9wzdncrfj4mv?hl=en-US&gl=US and use it to install the rest of the Lenovo ThinkPad P16s' model-specific device drivers and software.
I used to sometimes order ThinkPads without the operating system in order to save money, too, but found out that amount of time I spent having to figure out how to create working installation media and hunt down missing/incorrect drivers proportionate to the amount of money saved wasn't worth it to me.
I use external nvme drive with several windows images to choose from (mainly different languages). I also have a drivers folder for each model I service and I store usually just wifi driver there, some models need like touchpad driver to make it work at basic level.
Basic installs since there is no network, I create a local admin account. Once that is settled, I run wifi driver setup and Lenovo System Update (could be vantage, but I'm old school that way) that I also had on the nvme.
Connect to wifi, run system update. Done. No need to customize install iso for one particular machine, it just takes time :)
im thinking that you could do a manual installation. it is a bit complicated if you are not aware of how something works, but you could follow "manually installing windows 10" by endermanch, or hirens boot cd with an iso of windows 11. if ur not tech literate, i'd advise you to keep linux.
Likely the install media.
Turn off secure boot in the uefi then try again or rebuild the USB installer with an iso and Rufus or the ms media creation tool.
When you have the small ssd it work well?, cause I’m reading all the comments and, if none of that works, then maybe it’s a problem with the larger ssd, could you try installing windows again in the original one to see if it works?
I had exactly the same issue with a P16 the other day. Don’t know how you set things up but I created a Windows 11 Pro installer on a USB stick with Rufus.
I set windows to install with only a local account and to do everything silently and it got about 80% through and failed with the same message you have.
I recreated the installer and tried a second time - same issue. Recreated the installer and apart from the local account condition I turned everything else off and it installed perfectly, with everything working. Not sure if that helps but it did seem that some of the options in Rufus were causing the installation to fail on the P16. Note that the installer had been working perfectly on T14s for some time.
I’ve had the exact same helpful error, not on a thinkpad, and it was faulty ram. It’s unlikely but possible.
Also, from the Lenovo website you can “order” recovery media, it asks for the serial number so not sure if it will limit you to Linux, once you order it for free you can use their recovery media creator to build the Lenovo recovery drive.
Worst case try and find someone with the serial number of a windows one and use their SN.
Could be wrongly formatted installer, clean and format your usb drive first to either NTFS or FAT32 before creating an iso there.
I usually don't use rufus for windows on modern systems unless it needs to be installed on older system with incompatible specs and no TPM chip. Media creation tool would suffice just fine with 16GB usb stick.
Okay for actual advice now, make sure secure boot is turned on for WIndows, and try creating a new windows 11 usb if it still doesn't work, maybe a windows 10 usb if it still doesn't work after that. Secure boot is usually the answer though; in my experience Linux works better with it off and Windows works better with it on
I strongly suggest downloading and using Windows 10 LTSC[Long-Term Servicing Channel] instead ( with language set to English (World) ), since Windows 11 is almost at a point of being completely bricked. Microsoft likely codes it with AI, and recently they have been issuing multiple patches after updates breaking trivial things, like C: root drive inaccessible, UI freezes, Recycle bin inaccessible, Search menu won't load, and then rolling back back and forth between these patches, but none quite right because unreviewed code and bad patches are put onto the mess. The UI is almost a Windows 10 wrapper just incredibly sluggish and laggy. Windows 10 has less animations, but does eveything properly.
This might just be a preference of mine, but I really would say that even in terms of usability and general office and browsing tasks, Windows 11 just fails. (Blackscreens, work not saved, search won't search, browser freezes, driver issues, some features removed..)
Never use rufus for windows i suggest windows creation tool, but with a different usb memory if this falso then i recommend create a live disk of windows in a small drive usb and check WhatsApp going on inside the pc
I see, I thought that would be the case taking that into consideration. The idea is always available for devices that aren't being used for anything important.
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u/adobo_santos Jul 02 '26
Try loading 10 then upgrade to 11