brand new GTR5 - cannot install windows 10 or 11 pro

nighthawk

Last week I received my brand new GTR 5.  Happy me! But not anymore. I simply cannot install windows on it. Not windows 10 or Windows 11.

The first time I powered the computer on it started to install Win11. Around the time I had to create an user account the system froze and a few seconds later I got a BSOD –critical process died. It rebooted and ended up in BIOS. I tried to exit the bios but that did not work.The only thing I could do was powering the system down using the red button.
I  powered the GTR5 back on after a few minutes but the scenario was the same: BSOD and reset to bios.
I looked around on the Beelink support sites and tried one of their tips: reseating the memory and the SSD. But that did not help. And yes, I tried it 4 times now.
Now there was something puzzling me: why did I always ended up in the BIOS? And why could I not exit from there? Well, the answer was simple: after the  BSOD and reboot my SSD disappeared.  If I power up the gtr5  and go straight into the bios I see my SSD: A Kingston500GB SNVS500G. After the windows BSOD and reset into the bios not anymore.
My first idea was maybe a corrupt windows installation. So I downloaded the 10GB+Windows 11 pro file and created a USB boot stick. Started up the pc and it reinstalled Windows 11 pro on the SSD. After that it rebooted, I removed the USB drive and the windows 11 installation started and crashed again with aBSOD.

After that I tried the following things:

• Reseated the memory and SSD again. Cleaned golden contacts of SSD
• A4 hour+ memory test with MemTest v10.0. No problems with that at all. It passed the test
• Started up with Hiren’s boot USB. A tool that starts Windows 10 PE and has a ton of utilities.I could work (text editing, surfing, fooling around) for a few hours without any problem except it could not see my SSD. According to windows my NVME controller worked just fine.
• Downloaded Windows 10 pro from Beelink , created a boot disk and tried to install  windows 10 pro. Got a BSOD after few minutes into the installation ( WHEA critical error) and reset to bios. SSD gone again
• Bios reset to default settings.  Bios is the latest version I think: 1.24
  

Nothing worked.   

Now I have a problem: I don't have a spare SSD nor another computer to check out the SSD and update the firmware (if there is any).
I am willing to buy one, but after a conversation with a tech guy today I am indoubt. He told me that it was probably that I got a bad SSD. But I could also be a bad motherboard..
So guys, what do you think of it? Any thoughts are welcome! Change the SSD or send the GTR5 back?

Regards

nighthawk

A few other things:

1. on the SSD I got there was a black silicon thermal pad attached for cooling. I have never seen that on photo's of GTR inner workings. Normal?

2. there is L shaped thin cable for an additional 2.5 inch sata SSD attached to the motherboard but also a spare one in the box. Normal?

spoonfx

Hi Nighthawk ... I have a similar experience BSOD when I receive my GTR5 too. Assuming you have the same mediatek wifi 6e card as my unit I believe the culprit here is the driver for this wifi card provided by beelink.

I have endless headche BSOD trying to install of W11 Pro with the image provided by Beelink support site. Finally last effort before thinking want to return the death on arrival pc I downloaded the W11 Pro image from Microsoft and sucessfully manage to complete the installation WITHOUT any BSOD and has been running smoothly ever since. There is an exclaimation mark for the wifi card - driver needed but bluetooth all works I have disble the wifi and use ethernet cable for internet connection.

Try to use the Microsoft image and gives it another try.

Hope the above infomation may help you.

Good luck

Support-03

Hello there,

Sorry for the trouble.
Here are the potential solutions.
1.Please unplug the power supply and hit the hole of CLR CMOS for 10 seconds , then plug the power .
If it doesn't work , try several times.

2. Please take out the BIOS battery and put it back after a couple of hours.
3.Please press delete key as soon as you turn on the PC, so that you can go to BIOS setting.  Press  key F9 .To confirm the restoration of your BIOS default settings, click "Yes".
You can also go to the "Security"  or "Boot" button and reset your BIOS there. Click to "Save" > "Exit".

4.Go to  "Boot" and tap to enable the "UEFI boot" option.

5.Check your boot order. Set your SSD or hard drive as the device to first boot. Then press "Enter".

rmarion59

spoonfx replied at 2022-10-27 13:16
Hi Nighthawk ... I have a similar experience BSOD when I receive my GTR5 too. Assuming you have the  ...

Humm.... if you have been able to install Windows 11 Pro using legit .ISO file... how did you get your License Key?

Beelink uses OEM Digital License!

rmarion59

The best way I know to install/reinstall Windows 10/11 Pro or Ubuntu on the GTR5 5900HX mini PC is to;

Let's pretend we are looking for Windows 11 Pro

0) Check all hardware like you did and how it is suggested by @Support-03

1) Go to Beelink GTR5 5900HX Support Page
https://www.bee-link.com/cms/support/driverhardware?product_id=42

2) Download "Windows 11 PRO System of GTR5 5900HX"

3) You may want to download all the "Drivers" just in case you may need to update or reinstall a driver in the future.

3) Beelink uses Microsoft OEM Digital License and the installation scripts inside the Windows 11 Pro UEFI-based package does the job.

4) After you download Windows 11 Pro, you will need to unzip the huge file to root folder of a NTFS Formatted 16GB Flash Drive for which the volume name has to be "WINPE" (in accordance to the scipts inside the image.

5) When ready... you reboot the machine... hit repeatedly <F7> to get to Boot Menu, then select your Flash Drive...

If you look inside the scipts, it will first DiskPart and create hard disk partitions properly then continue on an install Windows 11 Pro. When done, you will of course have to run Windows Update multiple times (up to 22H2 if you want), install your Anti-Virus software, your programs and data.

...

As for the AMD/Mediatek RZ608/MT7391e WiFi6 NIC card... this driver works just fine or you may look for version 3.3.0.615 available online.

I hope it helps!

rmarion59

About RZ608 NIC card not working or slow... just a thought...

When I first used my mini PC, it went through few Windows Update... I then installed my folders/apps etc... and tested my WiFi6... it was very slow... I went the old way to fix it... I believe the reason the Wi-Fi 6 Mediatek RZ608/mt7921 network card is not working as expected is probably due to Windows Update changing some BIOS settings. In this case, unplug everything from the mini PC and then hold the Power button for ~60 seconds. After that, turn on mini PC again and run a SpeedTest... speed should become much more acceptable.

nighthawk

Support-03 replied at 2022-10-27 19:45
Hello there,

Sorry for the trouble.

Hello,

Thanks for your input. The last week I tried maybe 20 times to unplug the power, pushing the green button 15 seconds to clear the cmos and plugging the power back in. After that I always went into the bios to load the default settings and saving+exiting.
Did not work.

Today i opened the gtr5 and took a look to locate the battery. Can not see it.  Is it on the other site of the motherboard? Is it a standard CR2032 battery?  And which screws do I need to remove to get the motherboard out?

thanks!
nighthawk

nighthawk

Hi,

Today I tried different things. Some of them I had already done in the last week but I am willing to try everything at this point.

• Unplugging the power and clearing the cmos 15 seconds etc. Reloading the default or optimized BIOS settings etc. I did this maybe 5 times today. Did not work
  

• I downloaded a Windows 11 ISO file (Dutch language) from Microsoft website. It is the latest release: Windows 11 2022 Update Version 22H2. I used RUFUS to create a bootable win11 usb stick. Powered up the GTR5 and the installation started just fine. At a point I had to select a partition on which to install Win11. I chose the SSD's primary partition, clicked the next button and got a 0x80070001 error at which the installation stopped. Powered down the computer, waited a few minutes and tried to install win11 again. The result was once again an 0x80070001 error at the same moment in the install process. The 3th time I tried I did one thing different: I tried to select the ssd primary partition and format it. And then I got the message: Windows Setup couldn't find a hard drive to store temporary installation files to....  That was strange since I could see the SSD drive in the box above. Until I pushed the refresh button. Suddenly the box was empty: no drive or partitions anymore. Gone.
  

So now I have tried the installation with 3 different Windows version: the original Beelink Windows 11 pro (the one that was installed and then the downloaded version), the Beelink Windows 10 pro and now the Microsoft Windows 11 version 22H2. Every installation attempt failed ( critical process died, 0x80070001 error, Windows setup couldn' find a hard drive to store....)

Time to try Ubuntu now I guess.

nighthawk

rmarion59 replied at 2022-10-28 05:41
The best way I know to install/reinstall Windows 10/11 Pro or Ubuntu on the GTR5 5900HX mini PC is t ...

Hello RMarion59,

Thank you for your thoughts! But I think you overlooked the part in my first long thread that I already downloaded the windows 11 pro and windows 10 pro from Beelink's website. They are huge. I created for both versions a USB pen disk to install windows. Both failed with a critical process died error.

thanks anyway!