Clean Windows Install - Including Drivers

PolloLoco

First of all - I'd like to say that I don't take responsibility for anyone damaging their Beelink BT3 Pro.  But if like me you've had a problem installing a new or updated operating system using the official Beelink images, this might work for you.

**Caution** I've now done this twice on my machine.  The first time I installed an older version of Windows 10 - since I had a USB stick from 3 years ago - and my BT3 Pro showed "Windows Activated".  I didn't want to wait so long for all updates, so I created a new USB with all the latest updates, and this time Windows WAS NOT activated.  If you can, I recommend grabbing your keys before proceeding - there's online software that supposedly works to get your current activation key.  In my case, my storage was corrupted, so I didn't have that option.

My BT3 pro was stuck in a bootloop, and occasionally I would get a garbled screen.  I tried using the Beelink images to install, and they never worked.  During one install attempt, my screen went red and there was a warning about possibly corrupted or damaged storage.  After that, when pressing F7 - the EMMC memory woudln't show up at all as a boot option.  In desperation, I connected a memory card (micro USB, 128GB, formatted NTFS) hoping that I could install Windows to a memory card.  It didn't work - but then I realized I could Boot from a regular Windows USB!  Not the Beelink images, a standard image from Microsoft.  Selecting a fresh Windows install after booting the USB allowed me to format my EMMC storage (my main partition).  After that, you might be able to install a Beelink image, but it didn't work for me.  Here are my step by step instructions as best I remember.  I've been running the latest version of Windows, all updates, everything working - for the last 2 weeks.

1) On another PC, create a USB drive using the Windows 10 Installation Media tool.  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
2) Connect an NTFS memory card to your BT3 pro.  I used a micro USB card in an adapter, formatted NTFS.  Size probably doesn't matter.
3) Connect your Windows 10 USB drive.
4) Power on your Beelink BT3 Pro.  Press F7 repeatedly until you get boot options.
5) You will see your Windows 10 USB drive as an option - this wouldn't show up if you hadn't used a memory card.  I don't know why.
6) Select a fresh Windows install.
7) Format the main partition.  Caution - I formatted the recovery partition by accident also - and it didn't allow me to make one bigger partition.  I recommend leaving it alone.  Be very careful - I take no responsibility if you kill your BT3 Pro.
8) Install Windows 10 on the main partition.
9) Windows will install but you won't have drivers for Wifi, bluetooth, audio, etc.  On another PC you'll want to download the drivers and copy them over via USB drive for a manual update.
10) Get your Wifi Driver from here, I used

1.596.33.0.  

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=Broadcom+802.11ac+WDI+SDIO+Adapter
11) Get all other drivers from here, use the double driver link provided in the review.  https://forum.freaktab.com/forum ... link-bt3-pro-review
12) Put all these drivers into a folder you can access easily.
13) On your BT3 Pro, go into settings, type device manager.
14) In device manager, for each item with a yellow asterisk - it's hardware that's uninstalled.  For each one, right click - install from and select the folder where you copied all the drivers to.  Choose the folder, that way you don't have to identify each driver individually.
15) When you're done, there should be only one "multimedia device" that's uninstalled - but for me everything works.

Once you're done, set up your screen resolution, go into updates and update to the latest version of Windows as needed.  Activate Windows 10, because if you created a new USB stick as I instructed above, your BT3 will not be activated.

Hopefully this works for you - my BT3 Pro is running great now - and I thought it was totally dead 2 weeks ago.