UX550GE can't install Windows 10, NVMe not found.

[IvanCN]

Hi,

I have an Asus UX550GE that was given at work. I decided to install Ubuntu 20.04 on it. The Ubuntu installation worked flawlessly. After using Ubuntu on it, we decided that we needed to get it back on Windows 10. I downloaded the Windows 10 installer, and as soon as I ran it I got a message asking for drivers since no storage device was found.

This was about one month ago, during the last month I have been going back and forth with the support team from Asus, they always apologize and get back to me with the same link to download drivers. I have tried all of the drivers on their support site and no one works.

After reading a little more on the topic I realized that this is related to the Intel's VMD platform that causes the Windows installer to not be able to "see" the NVMe drive. In most of the support tutorials I found that the workaround is to disable VMD from the BIOS. The thing is that this UX550GE doesn't have the option to disable VMD. As I said, this has been going for a month, the solution from Asus was to send them the laptop and to pay 86 CAD just for the verification plus the fees for the "repair". I mean, the laptop is not damaged, it should be a straightforward process. I am writing here as a last resort, maybe someone has gone through the same painful process and has been able to solve this.

Thx in advance.

[IvanCN]

Hi @Falcon_ASUS 

Thank you for your efforts.

Please start by checking if the SSD is detected in the BIOS.
>If the SSD is not visible in the BIOS, it might indicate a hardware problem.
The SSD is visible in the BIOS. Actually the laptop has Ubuntu installed and it works well with Ubuntu. The issue appears only with the Windows installer. 

>If the BIOS detects the SSD, but the SSD is not found during the OS installation, the issue might be with the operating system you are using. 
The Windows installers that I have tried are Windows 10 and Windows 11 versions downloaded directly from the Microsoft website.

>In this case, we recommend sending your laptop to a service center to have the ASUS OS installed.
I need the Windows OS to be installed, not Asus OS. I know how to reinstall Windows, I have done it a lot of times in many laptops, desktops, servers, using SSDs, NVMes, RAID arrays, etc. This is the first time I face such a ridiculous setup. Maybe I am wrong and the UX550GE uses ASUS OS (which could be a special version of Windows), if this is the case, there should be a place to get this ASUS OS downloaded.

At this point ASUS support is also getting to a dead-end, it seems I will simply need to stop using this laptop and focus on a better brand next time.

[tardhiansyah]

Hello Ivan, does the problem still occur? Previously I also experienced the same thing. The solution I came up with was:
1. Download the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver, download the zip version, not the EXE.
2. Extract the zip
3. Copy the extracted results to the same flash disk as the Windows 10 ISO.
4. When a message appears asking for a driver, navigate to the Intel RST driver folder on the flash disk

I hope this helps