technology, which the standard Windows installer often cannot see without external drivers, resulting in a "no drives found" error. Why You Need This Driver
If you are trying to install a clean copy of Windows 10 or Windows 11 on a system, you will likely hit a major roadblock: the Windows installation screen shows absolutely no storage drives available .
Historically, users could go to the Intel download page and grab a small, pre-packaged file called F6flpy-x64(Intel VMD).zip . You could simply unzip this onto a secondary USB flash drive and click "Load Driver". Intel RST VMD Controller 9AOB F6flpyx64 - HP Community f6flpyx64 intelr vmdzip 12th gen top
: Copy the entire SetupRST_extracted folder (specifically looking for the VMD or f6vmdflpy-x64 subfolders) onto your Windows installation USB.
Look for the meant for 12th Gen platforms . Download the SetupRST.exe file to your working PC. Step 2: Extract the Driver Files You could simply unzip this onto a secondary
: Standard retail Windows installation media does not natively include the specific VMD driver. Because Windows cannot communicate with the VMD controller out of the box, it fails to see your physical solid-state drive.
. This "F6" driver is essential because newer Intel CPUs use Volume Management Device (VMD) Download the SetupRST
Volume Management Device is a feature supported on these platforms, allowing for more flexible and manageable storage solutions directly from the hardware level. VMD helps in enabling certain storage configurations and enhancing the robustness of storage systems.
This process requires a second computer, a USB drive, and the driver file. 1. Download the Driver Go to the official Dell Support or Intel Support website.
The file you are looking for is the , which is necessary for the Windows installation process to recognize storage drives on 12th Gen Intel platforms.
If you’re installing Windows on a 12th Gen Intel laptop/desktop (Alder Lake) with VMD (Volume Management Device) enabled in BIOS, this driver is mandatory — otherwise your NVMe SSD won’t be detected during setup.