I truly cannot reinstall Windows on my new HP Envy X360.

[STRMfrmXMN]

Hey all, I'm pretty tech savvy and have never been stumped by a device like this ever before.

 

Here's the laptop in particular.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-envy-x360-2-in-1-13-3-touchscreen-laptop-intel-evo-platform-intel-core-i7-8gb-memory-512gb-ssd-pale-gold/6428876.p?skuId=6428876

 

When I first booted it up, it was laden with bloatware and spyware. I figured reinstalling Windows fresh without all the HP crap would be the way to go to not have to worry about it. When booting from my bootable USB with the Windows 10 installer on it, I found zero drives detected for Windows to be installed on. This laptop uses an NVMe SSD. I ran DISKPART within the Windows installer and the only drive that showed up was the USB drive I was trying to use to install Windows.

 

No biggie, I'll go through Windows to reinstall that way. I do exactly that, and all the bloatware and spyware comes back. I try to manually remove all of it and, even with many services manually stopped in the Services snap-in, the idle RAM usage is 4GB which is quite substantial on a device with 8GB of RAM. I opt to try to reinstall Windows again, but this time deleting the partition HP installs from the factory on the SSD that loads all the bloatware. When doing that, I deleted the WindowsRE partition, so now my dumbass doesn't have a recovery partition, hence the "Reset this PC" feature baked into Windows won't work. If I try to create a recovery drive, the program tells me "some required files are missing from your PC." If I run sfc /scannow, nothing turns up or changes. 

 

I'm truly stumped. I cannot reinstall Windows, period. The USB route shows no drives to install Windows on, I can't do the build-in reset because I have no recovery partition, and I cannot create a recovery partition, period. What am I to do now?

 

For reference, if you need it, the NVMe drive shows up as a GPT drive in Disk Management. Secure boot is off. I have tried two flash drives in total and neither worked. The drivers on HP's page for this thing are useless and only give the RST driver as an option to download.

[Letgomyleghoe]

install ubuntu on that USB, run ubuntu from it, and see if you can see the disk in the terminal.

https://www.networkinghowtos.com/howto/list-all-hard-disks-connected-to-a-ubuntu-system/

[STRMfrmXMN]

2 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

install ubuntu on that USB, run ubuntu from it, and see if you can see the disk in the terminal.

https://www.networkinghowtos.com/howto/list-all-hard-disks-connected-to-a-ubuntu-system/

Thanks, doing this next.

[STRMfrmXMN]

45 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

install ubuntu on that USB, run ubuntu from it, and see if you can see the disk in the terminal.

https://www.networkinghowtos.com/howto/list-all-hard-disks-connected-to-a-ubuntu-system/

Alright, so I did that, and it just gives me the two hardware paths on my USB drive. No mention of the NVMe SSD at all. 

 

Edit: Sorry scratch that. If I actually try to go through with installing Windows then the Ubuntu installer sees the Windows partitions and everything on my NVMe drive. But if I run the command to see all drives in "Try Ubuntu without installing", then it doesn't see my NVMe drive.

[TylerDurden!]

57 minutes ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

GPT drive in Disk Management.

can the ssd be removed? Hook it up to another system and format the thing

[STRMfrmXMN]

6 minutes ago, TylerDurden! said:

can the ssd be removed? Hook it up to another system and format the thing

I have not heard of Fight Club, nor am I going to remove it because A. this laptop is literally less than a day old to me and B. it's a pain in the ass to disassemble and that's the last thing I would want to do. I also don't know if just formatting the thing is the answer. I think there's some peculiar and specific reason why a Windows installer doesn't see the NVMe drive but the Ubuntu one does, and I don't want to be stuck not being able to install Windows on this thing.

[Kilrah]

Only thing I could think of is they use some non-standard controller for no good reason and it needs a specific driver...

Can you change the drive mode in the BIOS, with RAID/AHCI modes for example? If yes try changing that.

[STRMfrmXMN]

8 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Only thing I could think of is they use some non-standard controller for no good reason and it needs a specific driver...

Can you change the drive mode in the BIOS, with RAID/AHCI modes for example? If yes try changing that.

My guess is that yes, they use some nonstandard driver. Looking at the hardware IDs for the M.2 drive, copy-pasting them into Google shows me nothing at all. I think I need to inject either the Intel RST driver during install (can’t do that cuz my only remaining USB port during install is USB-C and I don’t have a USB-C flash drive, both USB-As are taken up by the installer and a mouse so I can interface with the installer since none of the OEM stuff works during install) or give up. I cannot change the drive mode at all. The BIOS is surprisingly limited in options. Can’t even turn off the BIOS beep when pressing too many keystrokes at once :/

[STRMfrmXMN]

Well I did finally manage to reinstall Windows, but even prior to connecting to the internet, the device preinstalled some of the HP spyware. Honestly don't know where it comes from.

 

Oh, and I downloaded the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool and did the "Upgrade this PC now" option, which got me a fresh install. Unfortunately, it was for pretty much no reason after all was said and done. MBAM and AdwCleaner got rid of the majority of the crap and I manually stopped anything that looked tied to HP in the Services snap in.

 

This still leaves a user with no solution in sight if they don't have Windows installed on the machine already, which is unfortunate.