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« on: September 05, 2023, 11:02:47 pm »
Here's another success story (eventually). I have an HP Laptop 17-by2053cl with Windows 11 on it , UEFI only, previously upgraded to 16GB RAM and SSD drive. Wanted ArcaOS 5.1 on it too. Tried to install with a DVD but it would not boot, so made a USB stick, and boot would start, but then hang immediately after the boot logo. Eventually figured out that it didn't like AMOUSE.SYS, so switched to IBM's MOUSE.SYS and boot continued to the WPS, but then I got a 'ISO not found' error when the WPS started.. Fiddled with it for too long, but figured out that if I remove the USB stick and re-insert at the right moment before the WPS started, then the install started, but then it could not find any disk to install on. Turns out the install did not detect the SATA adapter (because it is technically a RAID adapter, though in non-RAID mode) so I was finally stuck.
Then I found out there is an NVME slot in this laptop! So I got a 1TB one ($45) and transferred Win11 over to it and left a nice big 450GB unallocated space for ArcaOS. Made sure Win worked, then restarted installing ArcaOS using lessons learned up to now and it recognized the NVME drive as GPT and installed, although I had to do the remove/re-insert trick with the USB stick at each boot. Now ArcaOS was installed - woohoo! But...
When I rebooted with no USB stick attached, I got a 'Your system needs to be Repaired' blue screen of confusion. It took me a while to figure out I needed to go into the BIOS to set the ArcaOS EFI as the default. Now the Arca EFI boot list appeared and I could boot ArcaOS 5.1 and it worked - Wow! Even more amazing, it now recognized the SATA drive, and I could format it FAT32 to use as storage for both OS's. But...
Rebooted and tried to boot Windows, but again the 'Repair' blue screen. Tried doing repairs as per various Internet sites, but nothing worked, so finally just re-installed Windows 11 (from DVD). That worked and now I can switch between the 2 OS's at will using the ArcaOS EFI menu.
And I have to say that this laptop works great with ArcaOS (and Windows) now that it is installed on an NVME. If only ArcaOS had WiFi <sigh>.
I'll upload a testlog too...
Regards,