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EthanHarris's avatar
EthanHarris
Iron Contributor
Apr 23, 2025

No device drivers were found when installing Windows 11 from USB drive

My PC is fully compatible with Windows 11 and this error pops up after selecting the disk to install Windows 11. It says: No device drivers were found. Make sure that the installation media contains...
configuration
device management
MaxwellHall's avatar
MaxwellHall
Iron Contributor
Apr 23, 2025

When your USB is forced to FAT32 (4 GB limit) but you can’t switch to NTFS, splitting the install.wim into sub-4 GB chunks lets Setup load it properly without reformatting the drive. This is especially important when you are trying to create a Windows 11 bootable USB on non-Windows OS, which does not support NTFS write by default.

You should split the install.wim file into small parts in order to solve 'No device drivers were found' issue for installing Windows 11 from USB.

You can use DISM's /Split-Image to break the WIM into ~3.8 GB chunks:

dism /Split-Image /ImageFile:E:\sources\install.wim ^
  /SWMFile:E:\sources\install.swm /FileSize:3800

/ImageFile: points to the original WIM.

/SWMFile: is the prefix for the split files (install.swm, install2.swm, …).

/FileSize: sets the maximum size per file (in MB).

The original install.wim may remain; you can safely delete it after confirming the .swm files are present.

Now, eject and re-insert the USB into your target PC. Windows Setup will automatically detect the split files and proceed without asking for drivers.

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