Medion Akoya X7811 - Can't get a thumb drive with Windows to work for a clean install?

[meteoritehunter]

Hello,

Not sure what I'm doing wrong here, any guidance would be appreciated.  

I have an older Medion Akoya laptop X7811, circa 2011.  MSN30011218 I figured it would be a decent backup computer with the investment of an SSD, and a place to run some Windows programs without putting Windows on my Mac. My friend took the hard drive out when he went back to Germany, so I picked up a new Sandisk 3D SSD (based on some posts I saw in this forum, I think the computer is too old for NVMe). It was running x64 Windows 7 when he left, currently has just 4GB of RAM, but I'm upgrading to at least 8 if I can get it working.  I do know that my friend messed around some with the BIOS at some point to optimize performance.  I have no idea how to tell if that's the issue, but it could be part or all of it.  

My working computer is a MacBook running 10.15.5 Catalina.

I have tried to use a wiped, 16 GB, formatted-to-FAT-32 thumb drive to do a clean install of a few versions of Windows 10 and Windows 8 in a few different ways.  In case I was somehow screwing things up, I downloaded unetbootin and made a Windows 8 thumb drive made with the application. It looks the same as the Windows 8 thumb drive I made from the Windows 8 .iso file, myself. Windows 8 is nice because the largest file in the Windows 8 install package is <4 GB, so it simplifies things for FAT-32. 

I've run through my failed Windows 10 install attempts here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bootcamp/comments/hg4dj9/trying_to_make_a_win10_flashdrive_for_a_clean/ 

I have a bunch of screencaps there, am not sure if that might help. 

To skip to the present...after using unetbootin to make a Windows 8 flash drive, I'm getting a new error:

https://i.imgur.com/vXLJAo8.jpg 

>PXE-E61 : Media Test Failure, check cable. 

Someone else has had this error before! --

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/medion-laptop-failure-operating-system-not-fou...

But the tentative conclusion of that thread is that it's a boot order issue, and I have repeatedly entered the Boot Menu after powering on, selected the flash drive as the boot option, hit enter, and get the same error message, so I think something else is going on? 

Does anyone know what's up? 

The only other information I've learned today is that when I try to load Windows from a flash drive made by Boot Camp on the Mac, it is automatically in ExFAT format, which leads to "ex" at the top left of the prompt screen after the flash drive fails to load Windows.  When I make the program manually and try to load from a FAT-32 formatted drive, I don't see "ex" at the top left.  It doesn't work either way.  

Thanks for any help in advance.  I don't know what to try next.  

[daddle]

@meteoritehunter 

I gave you an answer in the german forum.

Do use the MediaCreationTool from Microsoft, it will definitely work. It's what  I suggested inlatest post alreadey.

daddle

[meteoritehunter]

I have replied in the German forum...

I did not see any obvious differences between the flash drive created by 1) opening the Windows .ISO on a Mac, dragging the files into a FAT-32 drive and 2) the flash drive formatted by the Windows Media Creation Tool.  The computer responded to the Windows-made drive in a new way, though, so something was different.  It still did not work, though..  

[marianlloyd]

As a simpler alternative, you can work with the free Rufus program, which can be downloaded without installation. You'll need to integrate the ISO file of the desired Windows system.

https://proessays.org

[Zwanghaft69]

Hi,in my Case i have created a Microsoft bootable USB Stick with the Creaton Tool,too.

But after the usb-installation i Tried to create a linux-bootable stick with Tools Like ventoy or rufus.the utilitys doesn't want to Work.

I don't know why,that ist Windows-home and i thougt that Windows 10 pro will Accept that.

Perhaps?