If you are installing Windows and you get to the screen where it asks "Where do you want to install Windows?", and the list of partitions is empty, chances are your installation media is missing a driver.
The screen says: "We couldn't find any drives". When you follow their advice and click "Load driver", there are no drivers to be found.
This happened to me when installing Windows 10 Pro on a Dell laptop, I have seen similar reports regarding HP machines. While I could not find any support on the Dell site, I found this on the HP support site: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06983517
If you are installing from a CD ROM, you are pretty much stuck now. Switch to installing from a USB drive. Then you can add the necessary drivers and load them as described in the HP article.
So basically, you download the driver for your hard disk from the manufacturer's support site, you do not execute but open the file using Winzip or 7-Zip and extract the files and folders to you USB drive. I used a sub folder named "drivers" to keep the structure clean.
Then, when you see the empty list during your installation process, just click "Load driver", navigate to the folder containing the driver, and you will see your drive and partitions.
It is simple if you know what to do. But in my research process I came across an abundance of posts that were completely unhelpful, ranging from checking the cables and power supply for the disk to changing BIOS settings. All of these posts may be relevant under certain circumstances, but please do try this simple and way less invasive procedure first 😊
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