Beebox N3150 - Issues installing Win10 on mSATA

Hi,

I have purchased an ASRock Beebox N3150. I have replaced the 2GB RAM, which came with the unit with 2x 4GB SODIMMS. I was hoping to get away with the onboard 32GB storage, but this was becoming an issue, so I purcahsed an AData 128gn mSATA drive.

I have a Windows 10 USB Installation drive. I put this into the Beebox and start going through the installation process.

When I go to select the mSATA drive in the list, it won't let me install Windows on this device and showed an error something along the lines of "We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information see the setup log files".

Research indicated that Windows 10 hates a pile of partitions and on the existing onboard storage there were about 4 partitions. So I deleted these. The issue persisted.

Follwojng other advise, I dropped into a command prompt and using DiskPart, I selected the drived, cleaned it, created an NTFS partition and set it as the active partition.

This time when I went through the installation process, a new message presented itself:
"Windows can't be installed on Drive 0 Partition 1 (Clcik here for more information)"

When you click on the More Information, I get a message saying Windows can't be installed onto my selected location and provided the error code: 0x80300001

Apparently this error code often shows when the Windows 10 USB Installation drive does have the right drivers for your device.

When I go to the ASRock website there are INF drivers, but they are a Windows executable - the raw files aren't there.

Where too from here!?!?

??? Why don't people put down model numbers when seeking help ???

What model of AData?

Kinda makes you wish you'd spent that extra $30-40 and gotten the 128GB BeeBox now, huh?

Good deal. Glad to hear it ended up being something as simple as that.

wardog,
You appear quite knowledgeable about the BeeBox. Do you have any suggestions for me, WALAPONIC, concerning my Post: 16 Dec 2015 at 12:50am ? Thank you.

For the Beebox series of PCs, ASRock has supplied information and a special tool to assist owners with installing Windows 10 on another drive, if they have purchased a Beebox version that has Windows 10 included.

On the Beebox information page, in the FAQ section, there is a guide explaining how this is done. That is the second question in the FAQ, here:

http://www.asrock.com/nettop/Intel/Beebox%20Series/?cat=FAQ

The FAQ includes a link to a program that will display the Windows 10 product activation key, that can be downloaded here:

http://www.asrock.com/nettop/Intel/Beebox%20Series/?cat=Download&os=Win1064

Scroll down to the Utilities section to find the AsrProductKey ver:1.0.0 program.

This information has been available as long as the Beebox product page has existed. Sometimes if you look for something, you can find it.

The problem that Eric1957 mentioned about installing Windows on a PC when more than just the target OS drive is powered on, is a real issue. It affects Windows versions at least as far back as Windows 7, and possible Vista and XP too.

What I will describe may not be exactly what Eric1957 encountered, but it will affect any PC with more than one HDD or SSD operating when Windows is installed. The difference between 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows that he mentions regarding this situation I can't comment on, since I've never used a 32 bit version of Windows. IMO, the 32 bit versions of Windows won't be any different.

The problem is caused by the Windows installation program itself. If more than one drive is detected by the Windows installation program, it will copy the boot partition (what Windows calls the System partition) onto a drive other than the target OS drive.

That leaves us with a Windows installation that is dependent upon two drives in the PC. If we later remove or format the drive with the boot/System partition on it, the PC will no longer boot.

This can be fixed by booting from your Windows installation media, and choosing the Repair option, or by creating a Windows Recovery disk, which can be a USB flash drive.

In the case of the Beebox PCs, it is the eMMC drive that is the other drive in it that the Windows installation program uses for the boot/System partition. Eric1957 deleted all the partitions from the eMMC drive before the Windows installation began, but it is quite likely that the boot/System partition was written to the eMMC drive. That can be easily confirmed with the Windows Disk Management feature, or the Diskpart tool.

The Window product key is stored in the BIOS/UEFI of the Beebox PCs, which is why it was not lost when the eMMC drive was formatted.

In general, Windows installations on home PCs are associated with the mother board in a PC.

Once you install a copy of Windows on a PC you built, or buy a PC with Windows pre-installed, you can install the same version of Windows on the same PC with a different storage drive without any problem with Windows activation. Once the PC is connected to the Internet, it will automatically try to activate Windows.

If you change the mother board in a PC, you will need to activate Windows again. That is possible as long as you are using the same version of Windows on one PC.

Depending upon the version of Windows you are using (Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10), you may be prompted to enter the activation key at the beginning of the installation. Some versions of Windows (10) will allow you to skip entering the activation key. Other versions of Windows may not be as cooperative.

Pre-built PCs normally supply the Windows product activation key in some way with the PC.