You’re sitting there, staring at a purple Windows installation screen, and everything has ground to a halt. It’s frustrating. You’ve got your bootable USB plugged in, the BIOS is set correctly, but then that dreaded popup appears: no signed drivers were found. It feels like a dead end, honestly. You’re trying to install an OS on a brand-new NVMe drive or maybe an old SATA SSD, and Windows acts like the hardware doesn't even exist.
Modern computing relies on a handshake. That handshake is a digital signature. When Windows says it can't find a "signed" driver, it’s basically saying it doesn't trust the map you're giving it to find the hard drive. Or, more likely, it doesn't see the map at all because it's looking in the wrong folder.
What is actually happening when no signed drivers were found?
Most people think their hard drive is broken. It probably isn't. Usually, this happens because you’re using an Intel processor from the 11th generation or newer—think Tiger Lake, Alder Lake, or Raptor Lake. These chips use something called Intel Volume Management Device (VMD) technology. It’s a fancy way of optimizing data, but the standard Windows 10 or 11 ISO doesn't always carry the specific driver needed to "talk" to the VMD controller during the initial setup.
Microsoft tries to pack as many drivers as possible into that 5GB image. They fail. They can't keep up with every specific storage controller from Intel, AMD, or third-party RAID manufacturers like Marvell or HighPoint.
If you are using a Mac through Bootcamp or trying to revive an older laptop with a custom RAID configuration, you'll hit this too. The "signed" part is a security requirement. Windows refuses to load any driver that hasn't been verified by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). If you try to point it to a folder containing a "raw" or unsigned INF file, it’ll just blink at you and repeat the error. It's stubborn like that.
The Intel RST Trap
Let’s talk about the most common culprit: the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver. If you're on a laptop made in the last three or four years—Dell XPS, HP Spectre, Lenovo Yoga—you are almost certainly dealing with an Intel VMD issue.
Basically, the motherboard sees the drive, but the Windows installer is blind to the controller. You need to feed it the driver manually. But here is the kicker: you can't just download the .exe from Intel’s website and put it on a thumb drive. The Windows installer can’t run an executable. It needs the extracted files—the .inf, .sys, and .cat files.
How to get the right files
You have to go to the Intel website or your laptop manufacturer’s support page. Look for "Intel RST Driver" or "Intel VMD Driver." If it downloads as a .zip, extract it. If it downloads as an .exe, you might actually need to use a command line switch like /extract or use a tool like 7-Zip to reach into the guts of the installer and pull out the "Drivers" folder.
Put that folder on the same USB stick you're using to install Windows. When the error pops up, hit Browse, navigate to that folder, and suddenly—magic—your partitions appear.
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The USB Port Mystery
Sometimes the hardware is fine, and the drivers are technically there, but the communication channel is garbage. I’ve seen cases where plugging the installation USB into a Blue USB 3.0 or Red USB 3.1 port causes the no signed drivers were found error, but switching to a "slow" Black USB 2.0 port fixes it.
Why? Because some older Windows 10 ISOs don't have the native XHCI (USB 3.0) drivers loaded in the "pre-install" environment. The computer boots from the drive, starts the installer, and then loses contact with its own USB port because it doesn't know how to handle the high-speed data transfer yet. It’s a weird paradox. You're booting from a device that the OS then forgets how to read.
Is your ISO corrupted?
We have to talk about Rufus and the Media Creation Tool. If you used a third-party tool to "burn" your Windows ISO to a thumb drive, it might have messed up the partition scheme.
Modern PCs use UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface). If you created your bootable media using the MBR (Master Boot Record) partition scheme instead of GPT, the installer might freak out. It’ll load, but when it tries to interface with the hardware, the legacy communication style clashes with the modern UEFI firmware. This results in—you guessed it—drivers not being recognized.
Always ensure your bootable media matches your BIOS settings.
- UEFI BIOS? Use GPT partition scheme.
- Legacy/CSM BIOS? Use MBR.
- Mixing them? Expect errors.
Disabling VMD in the BIOS
If you’re fed up and just want Windows to install without hunting down obscure Intel INF files, there is a "cheat" method. You can go into your BIOS (usually by hammering F2, F10, or Del at startup) and look for storage configuration.
Many motherboards allow you to disable Intel VMD technology or change the SATA mode from RAID/Optane to AHCI.
Once you switch to AHCI, Windows usually recognizes the drive instantly because AHCI is a generic, widely supported standard that has been around since the mid-2000s. The downside? You might lose a tiny bit of performance optimization provided by VMD, but for 99% of users, you won't notice a difference. It’s a fair trade-off to actually get the computer running.
The "Hide Drivers" Checkbox
When you hit the "Load Driver" button and browse to your folder, there’s a little checkbox that says "Hide drivers that aren't compatible with this computer's hardware."
Keep it checked.
If you uncheck it and see a list of twenty drivers, and you pick the wrong one just to get past the screen, you’re asking for a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) the moment the computer reboots. If the list is empty even with the box checked, you have the wrong driver version. Don't force-feed Windows an incompatible driver. You’ll end up with a "Inaccessible Boot Device" loop that is even harder to fix.
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NVMe vs SATA: Does it matter?
Actually, yes. Older motherboards (Z170, Z270 era) sometimes support NVMe drives but only through a specific "M.2" driver that wasn't native back then. If you’re trying to install Windows 10 on an older board with a brand-new Samsung 990 Pro, you might need the Samsung NVM Express Controller driver.
Samsung actually provides these specifically for this reason. Most people forget that NVMe is a protocol, not just a shape of a drive. If the protocol isn't understood by the installer, the drive is invisible.
Real-world troubleshooting steps
Let's say you're doing this right now. You're stuck. Here is the move:
- Identify your CPU. If it's Intel 11th Gen or newer, go get the Intel RST VMD driver.
- Extract, don't just copy. You need the folder with the
.inffiles. If you see an.exe, you haven't gone deep enough. - Check your USB port. Move the drive to a different port. Try a USB 2.0 port if you have one.
- Verify BIOS settings. If you aren't using a RAID array, try switching from RAID mode to AHCI mode.
- Re-create the installer. Use the official Microsoft Media Creation Tool instead of a random ISO you found on a forum. It’s the most "standard" version.
A Note on AMD Systems
While Intel is the primary offender here, AMD systems occasionally hit this when using AMD RAID (StoreMI). If you have your drives toggled to "RAID" in the BIOS instead of "AHCI," Windows will not see the drives without the AMD RAID Bottom Device driver.
AMD provides a "RAID Driver" package on their support site. Like the Intel version, you need to extract the rcbottom, rcraid, and rccfg folders onto your USB. You usually have to load them in that specific order too, which is a massive pain.
The limitation of "Signed" Drivers
Microsoft is very strict about this because of "rootkits." Back in the day, a virus could masquerade as a hard drive driver, load itself before the OS even started, and hide from antivirus software forever. By requiring "signed" drivers, Windows ensures that the driver came from a verified source like Intel or Dell.
If you're trying to use a driver from 2012 on a Windows 11 install, the signature might be expired or using an old encryption method (like SHA-1) that Windows 11 now rejects. Always look for the most recent version available.
Actionable Next Steps
If you are currently looking at the no signed drivers were found error, do not panic and do not format your drive yet.
- Step 1: On a working computer, download the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) Driver Bootable Package.
- Step 2: Use a tool like 7-Zip to extract the contents. Look for a folder named
VMD. - Step 3: Copy that entire folder to your Windows installation USB.
- Step 4: Return to the error screen, click Load Driver, then Browse, and select that folder.
- Step 5: If the drive appears, proceed with the installation. If it doesn't, go into your BIOS and switch the Storage Controller from RAID/VMD to AHCI.
By following these steps, you bypass the communication gap between the hardware and the installer. This isn't a hardware failure; it's just a language barrier. Once you provide the right "translator" (the driver), the installation will proceed normally.
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Final Tip: Once Windows is installed, the first thing you should do is run Windows Update. It will often find a more "stable" version of that storage driver than the one you used to get the OS installed, ensuring your data speeds are where they should be.