Eric Shackleton

Loves to travel, could have been an astronaut chose to be in sales instead, crap singer, not good at painting or gardening, but good father & husband!

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@604saluteII @Charles_Leclerc @ScuderiaFerrari Long wait for that to happen at Ferrari especially with Leclerc he’s won just 8 times in 9 years and with this car this year it’s not happening

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@pussinpjs @Charles_Leclerc @F1 @ScuderiaFerrari just 8 wins in 9 years no other team would have him

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@GladiatorVegan @Charles_Leclerc @ScuderiaFerrari Look at his stats just 8 wins in 9 years says it all for me

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@RLZ87_ @Charles_Leclerc @ScuderiaFerrari Just 8 wins in 9 years any other team would have sacked him by now

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@DaDrowsyDude @Charles_Leclerc @ScuderiaFerrari Not a chance of a title, Ferrari signed him because no other drivers are available, stats tell the truth, 178 starts and has only won 8 times in 9 years! not won a race in nearly 2 years. Ferrari are so desperate for wins!

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@Charles_Leclerc @ScuderiaFerrari Why have Ferrari done this?
Is it because there is no other driver available? look at his stats in 176 starts he’s only won 8 races in 9 years for Ferrari! Not won a race in nearly 2 years any other team would have got shut of him a long time ago, Ferrari are desperate

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@wlfiechans WTF is this?

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@Welsh_Lady2 Ridiculous and complete waste of time and fans money it was just a way of allowing Max to get some more points if he had won pleased for Piastri

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@RobLMyers I went to this track when they first run the race in Nov ‘21 (Lewis won) it’s a terrible track that’s been adapted from a motorcycle track to F1, its narrow, awkward and for me too many bends and clearly not liked by the Ferrari cars

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@GazzettaFerrari not sure he’s as good as he thinks his stats tell the story been at Ferrari for 7 years he’s had 170 races and won just 8 that’s less than one win a season! Any other driver would be gone from any other team but maybe no one else wants to drive the big red bus!

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@FIAsteward Nicholas Latifi are you joking? He should never drive in F1 again because of AD2021 farce as for Piquet JR it’s a maybe

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@F1_driven Leclerc is ok but not great you need to look at his stats and it tells his story he’s done over 170 races for Ferrari in 8 years and only won 8 races in that time, that’s not good stats for a F1 driver in fact it’s poor

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

Hi @grok, who was the most famous person to visit my profile? It doesn't need to be a mutual, don't tag them, just say who it was

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

Clarksonsfarm I have 2 say they R takin advantage of him, quote 4 deckin was £20k for materials & labour then changed it to non slip deckin & the price was £40k crazy as 3 pieces of 12ft R just £120 it’s the same labour doing the same job!

[Steve @Steve58806055]

Still no call-back. Still not all drivers free for all.

But Reddit understood the issue:
https://t.co/xctqJjfnyk
🔸 110,000+ views
🔸 528 upvotes
🔸 71 shares
🔸 All for one missing VMD driver

First post ever on Reddit. It slipped into the viral sphere. The public clearly agrees.

👻 Support? Nah, they ghosted.
#MakeDriversFreeForAll
#FolsomPaloAltoSSDBlues
#MissingDriver
@HP @HPUK @EnriqueJLores @intel @IntelUK @PCMag
@tomshardware @verge @techradar @TechCrunch @WhichUK @BBCWatchdog @MartinSLewis @UK_CMA

[Steve @Steve58806055]

HP, Intel & the 13-Day Driver Disaster — A Customer Fixed What Tech Giants Couldn't
Chapter 1: The HP All-In-One Meltdown

Tuesday 20th May
I’m self-employed and use my HP All-In-One daily. It handles spreadsheets, quotes, pdf, everyday business tasks. In fairness, it’s been brilliant but I was just in the middle of preparing a complicated Excel sheet for a Tender when boom, a power surge to the building caused everything to reboot. Then not long after it did it again. I decide to boot back up in Safe Mode and it was while this was happening “strike 3” came, mid-boot. There the problems started, and I got stuck in perpetual motion of Bitlocker Recovery which then went to “your device ran into a problem and needs to restart. We’ll restart for you” Blue screen with a sad face that I would learn over the next 12 days to hate. Now let me make this very clear, I’m, at this stage not PC Tech Whiz. I get by and am very much self-taught so what ensued was a complete brain drain. I downloaded from Microsoft a Windows 11 installation pack in the form of an ISO. 3 letters I would also grow to detest. It got me absolutely nowhere because I got a message saying, “Driver Missing”. How, is that possible? So I started searching and I mean searching. Every kind of permutation. It’s a HP, look on their site nothing. Intel, it has Intel Core i5, the sticker is right in front of me. I find a driver download, great you’d think, no. At this stage I’ve borrowed a friends Laptop and we hit this recurring problem, the file you download will only execute on the device you download to. Try as I might, you cannot extract the files to place on (a new discovery to me) a “bootable USB”. Time spent this day 8 hours

Wednesday 21st May – Day 2

The words “Driver Missing” were now etched into my soul. I wasn’t ready to give up, but I was starting to realise I might be in over my head. I’d already borrowed a friend’s laptop to try and create a working Windows installer, but nothing was getting me past the same roadblock. Every time I booted from the USB and tried to install Windows, it told me a driver was missing. I started reading every forum I could find, and that’s when something called “Intel VMD” started cropping up. Sounded like a virus, but apparently it was something to do with how the SSD was connected in newer systems. Without that driver, Windows couldn’t see the internal drive. HP’s website had nothing useful. Intel’s site offered a download, but it came as a locked EXE file that wouldn’t open or extract. Not on the HP, not on the borrowed laptop. And even if I did somehow get the files out of it, how was I supposed to load them mid-install? Time spent this day: 10 hours.

Thursday 22nd May – Day 3

I was now three days in and not much closer to getting my machine back. I’d confirmed by now that the missing driver was something called a VMD controller driver. It was supposed to be available from Intel, but every version I found came packaged in a way that only worked if you were running Windows which I wasn’t, because my system was dead. It was a Catch-22. The EXE files wouldn’t open, and trying to extract them using tools on the borrowed laptop got me nowhere. HP’s support page didn’t list VMD drivers at all, just generic chipset stuff that didn’t help. I found Reddit threads full of people in the same boat, some dating back months. The only advice seemed to be “inject the driver manually into your boot media,” but no one explained how to actually do that in plain English. I started looking at tools with names like Rufus, NTLite, and DISM names that may as well have been spells from Harry Potter. Time spent this day: 9 hours. Morale: wearing thin.

Friday 23rd May – Day 4

By this point I’d entered what I started calling the loop of false hope. Every new idea felt promising for about five minutes. I tried NTLite, thinking maybe I could inject the driver into the ISO. It looked powerful but the interface was confusing and clunky, and every time I thought I’d mounted the right image, it either froze, failed to save, or spat out a useless ISO. I uninstalled and reinstalled it twice, but somehow it kept remembering previous sessions as if haunted. Then I tried a tool called Free ISO Creator, only to learn hours later that the ISOs it generated weren’t UEFI bootable, which meant my HP wouldn’t even recognise them. I was burning time chasing tools that couldn’t do what they promised or at least couldn’t do it in the way I needed. All the while the original problem hadn’t changed. I had no access to my machine, and no way to get the driver into Windows Setup. Time spent today: 10 hours. Breakthroughs: 0.

Saturday 24th May – Day 5

I decided to stop trusting quick fixes and start reading everything properly. ImgBurn seemed like the next logical step to create a proper ISO, especially since Free ISO Creator had already wasted a day. I rebuilt the ISO structure by hand, added the drivers I’d managed to scrape together, and used ImgBurn to compile it. This time it looked right. I used a new tool called Ventoy to get around having to wipe the USB stick every time I tested a new image. That part worked. I finally got the HP to boot from the USB and saw the Windows Setup screen for the first time in days. I thought I was in. But as soon as I clicked Install, the same problem came up, no drives detected. I still couldn’t get past the missing storage controller. It felt like I’d climbed a mountain only to realise I was still on the wrong one. Time spent today: 9 hours. Small win, big wall.

Sunday 25th May – Day 6

I was tired of staring at the Windows Setup screen with no drives visible. It was time to change strategy. I’d read about alternative recovery environments and decided to try Hiren’s BootCD PE. I added the ISO to Ventoy, booted it up, and to my surprise, it actually worked. It didn’t crash, and it let me run a few built-in tools. I could finally browse the internal drive and see that it existed, even if I still couldn’t install to it. That small breakthrough gave me hope. I spent the rest of the day exploring what else was out there and downloaded Gandalf’s WinPE next. It looked more powerful, more polished. But when I tried to boot it, I hit a DRIVER PNP WATCHDOG error. I thought maybe it was just that build, so I tried Sergei Strelec’s rescue ISO too. Same result. At least Hiren’s gave me visibility, but none of them could fix the root problem. I was now living inside bootable USBs, trying to patch a system that still didn’t want to live. Time spent today: 10 hours. Boot success rate: one out of three.

Monday 26th May – Day 7

I kept circling back to the same question. Why couldn’t the installer see the internal drive? The answer always came back to VMD. I was convinced I had the right Intel RST driver already, but every time I added it to the USB and loaded it during setup, it showed up but got flagged as incompatible. I started pulling apart the folders inside the driver packs and realised something odd. Most of them only had RAID and AHCI folders. The one I needed, VMD, was missing entirely. That felt important. I found a video on YouTube titled “How to extract Intel RST VMD drivers from setup-rst.exe” and watched it in full. Their interface looked slightly different to mine, but I followed the steps as closely as I could. It didn’t work first time, but the video confirmed I was looking for the right thing. It was the first time I felt like I had a real lead. Then came a huge break through I successfully booted Gandalf’s Windows PE x64 environment on the HP All-in-One using Ventoy in Wimboot mode. For the first time since this recovery nightmare began, the internal SSD became visible not to Windows Setup, but through tools like Disk Management and Command Prompt inside Gandalf.

This wasn’t luck. It was the result of methodical refinement:

I used a Gandalf ISO that supported 11th Gen Intel chipsets (i5-1135G7 with VMD)

I booted using Ventoy’s Wimboot mode, avoiding the DRIVER PNP WATCHDOG failures seen with direct ISO boots

I cleared all conflicting ISOs from the USB stick to avoid firmware confusion

Even though we hadn’t yet injected the proper VMD driver into Gandalf, it included just enough generic driver coverage to see the SSD. BIOS settings were untouched — Secure Boot may have been off, but nothing else was changed. This confirmed what I suspected: the hardware was fine, the SSD wasn’t dead — we were just missing the exact VMD driver required for installation.

This was the first major win. Time spent today: 11 hours. Light at the end of the tunnel: possibly.

Tuesday 27th May – Day 8

Today felt different. I went back through every driver package I’d downloaded over the last week and finally spotted one I hadn’t fully opened. Inside it was a folder marked VMD. Not AHCI, not RAID, VMD. The missing piece. I built a new ISO using ImgBurn, carefully structured the folders, and added only what I needed. No extras, no fluff, just AHCI, RAID, and VMD. I loaded it through Ventoy and clicked the “Previous Version of Setup” option at the bottom of the language screen, something I’d only just realised led to an alternate setup environment. This time, when I clicked Load Driver and browsed into the folders, the VMD drivers actually showed up. Not greyed out. Not flagged as unsigned. Visible, selectable, and clean. I didn’t even try to install Windows. Not yet. I just sat there for a minute, staring at the screen, realising I might finally be in control. Time spent today: 9 hours. Driver status: confirmed visible.

Wednesday 28th May – Day 9

Now that I could finally see the VMD drivers, I wasn’t taking any chances. I stripped the ISO down to just the essential folders AHCI, RAID, and VMD and rebuilt it again from scratch. I wanted to remove any distraction that could cause the installer to trip up. I tested different placement of the folders, tried a few builds with just the VMD set, and even ran a DISM injection directly into the boot.wim and install.wim files to make sure the drivers were there from the start. I checked everything twice. No shortcuts. I tested each ISO through Ventoy, and each time the drivers appeared exactly where they should. The installer still wouldn’t proceed, but for the first time, I knew it was a Windows issue, not a visibility issue. I had the right driver. I just hadn’t found the right install path. Time spent today: 10 hours. Progress: measurable.

Thursday 29th May – Day 10

I submitted a formal support request to Intel via their SSD Management Tools section. I detailed the missing VMD folder, referenced my exact version number, and politely requested access to a working driver. I even signed it off with “PLEASE with roses.” At this point, I was casting lines in every direction, not out of confusion, but because I knew exactly what I needed. I just couldn’t believe it was being kept behind a wall. I reached out on the HP Community Forum and posted a direct message to Paul Tikkanen. I asked if he had access to the Intel RST driver version 17.9.6.1019 in extracted format — ideally with the VMD folder included. Paul responded quickly and shared a ZIP file, but on extracting it, the VMD folder was missing. I explained the issue again, this time in full detail, outlining how the absence of that folder had blocked every single recovery attempt so far. To his credit, Paul took it seriously. He admitted he hadn’t realised HP had stripped those folders from more recent versions and said he would go look through older packages. That reply marked the first time I felt truly heard. Time spent today: 8 hours. Hope: cautiously returning. While HP and Intel were silent or evasive, a community volunteer was trying to solve what two goliaths entire support apparatus couldn’t.

Friday 30th May – Day 11

Paul came back with a gem: https://t.co/CZnBf6EXFt, an older HP package that still contained the original AHCI, RAID, and VMD folders exactly what I’d been trying to source. I replied immediately to confirm it looked correct. This was the first real sign of progress after 10 days of dead ends. While HP and Intel were silent or evasive, a community volunteer solved what their entire support apparatus couldn’t. Time spent today 3.5 hours

Saturday 31st May – Day 12

After nearly two weeks of dead ends, I posted again on the HP Community forum, more out of habit than hope. I’d already gone round in circles with official support, Intel, and every driver version imaginable. Then something shifted. Paul, a community member who’d been following the thread, finally clicked with what I’d been trying to explain for days. I wasn’t after the latest Intel RST drivers I needed a very specific version: 17.9.6.1019, including the VMD folder. That exact combination. For the first time, someone else got it. Paul backed me up, confirmed the gap, and it felt like I wasn’t shouting into the void anymore. I hadn’t solved the install at that point, but the breakthrough wasn’t technical it was emotional. Someone understood. Time spent today: 8 hours. Isolation: broken.

Sunday 1stJune – day 13

That morning, while continuing to experiment with another variant of Gandalf’s PE, an email alert popped up — a reply from the HP Community Forum. Paul had responded.

I opened it cautiously, half expecting another generic workaround or link. But this time, something had clicked. The jigsaw had fallen into place for him. Paul was now a man on a mission. He'd gone back, re-read what I’d shared, and acknowledged it: yes, I was right to be chasing that specific driver version. No, I wasn’t barking up the wrong tree. The VMD folder was missing from most packages. And yes — the version I needed was 17.9.6.1019, complete with .inf files like iaStorVD.inf that no longer shipped in the newer driver sets.

His message felt like a lightbulb moment — not just for him, but for me. I’d spent nearly two weeks being told I was wrong, confused, or asking for something that didn’t exist. Paul confirmed, in detail, that I was on the right track. He validated everything I’d been trying to explain.

That afternoon, while watching the Spanish Grand Prix, I used the very driver set Paul had referenced — version 17.9.6.1019, with the VMD folder fully intact — to build a fresh ISO. I loaded it via Ventoy, launched Setup, and for the first time, the Windows installer recognised the internal SSD. No errors. No warnings. Just progress.

The recovery took less than two hours.

It was over. Not thanks to HP. Not thanks to Intel. But thanks to a volunteer who listened. Paul Tikkanen deserves a medal.

Before we close Chapter 1 I have to leapfrog to today because this next entry is simply astounding.

Thursday 6th June Day 16: Intel Calls. Literally.

This evening I had a missed call from the USA — Folsom, California to be exact. I only knew of Folsom because of Johnny Cash! So I did some digging… and guess who it was? Intel Corporation! Weird, right? A global tech giant calling a UK home user directly over a storage driver issue? How on earth did they even get my mobile number? 11 minutes later: A voicemail confirming it really was Intel. Then an email lands from a polite technician named Symon B., offering to help fix the problem. You know the problem I already solved myself, without any help from Intel or @HP. And in that email? He links me to an article:
“How to Enable Intel® VMD Capable Platforms for RAID or Intel® Optane™” I click through, just to humour myself. It all feels familiar. Sure enough, after a bit more digging, I find myself staring at the same “SSD Management Tools” section I was trawling through 12 days ago. Seven sets of drivers. But guess what’s still missing? You guessed it Version 17.9.6.1019 — the one that actually worked. Still MIA.
Sorry if I sound flippant here but what are you guys playing at? I specifically told them in the only Support Ticket (which is, I’m hoping is why Symon called, VM and emailed) which version I needed, 17.9.6.1019 (I’m thinking of getting that tattooed on my arm by the way). So why bend over backwards to get to speak to me, just to give me the wrong version. You really couldn’t write this.

Chapter 2: HP Accountability Audit

What I said and how HP replied
Sunday 1 June to Thursday 5 June 2025 on X (formerly Twitter

Sunday 1st June

I said (6:17 PM): “Locked out of my own HP thanks to missing VMD drivers. Neither of you made them available. I lost 12 days trying to fix it. Got it working but only thanks to a helpful HP community member. This is being held to ransom.” (@HPSupport and @IntelSupport tagged publicly on X)

HP replied (6:36 PM): “Hi there, thanks for reaching out. I’m glad the HP community helped… please send us a DM with your case ID.” HP Support (X)

Monday 2 June

I said (6:54 PM): “Thanks for the reply. Just baffling that a missing VMD driver left me locked out for 12 days. Once I had it (not from HP), I had it fixed in under 2 hours. If you’re serious about goodwill, how about two Ferrari VIP tickets for Silverstone?” (Public follow-up on X)

HP replied (Tuesday 3 June, 8:14 AM – via DM): “I appreciate your kind and creative suggestion about the Ferrari VIP tickets that made me smile. While I can’t promise tickets, I’ll definitely pass along your message to the relevant team.” Shri\_HP

This was the turning point. Delivered without emojis, the phrase “that made me smile” trivialised the issue. I had lost nearly two weeks due to HP’s omission of a critical driver. I wasn’t joking. The response felt tone deaf and dismissive. This is where my tone changed from patience to public pressure.

Tuesday 3 June

I said (9:57 AM): “Just to clarify the Ferrari VIP ticket suggestion wasn’t a joke. I lost 12 days due to HP’s failure to provide a VMD driver. Fixed it in 2 hours thanks to a community member. Your ‘that made me smile’ reply felt patronising, not helpful.” (Public post on X)

HP replied (10:13 AM – via DM): “We are really sorry for the inconvenience that has been caused from our end it was not our intention to hurt you with our words, Steve 😕Do let me know if there is anything else I can assist you with, I will be happy to help you out. Looking forward to your reply! 🗨️HP Social Media Tech Support 💻”

This reply layered unnecessary emojis onto an already dismissive tone. I hadn’t raised concerns about tone at this point I’d flagged a support failure. Instead of addressing that, HP treated this like a minor misunderstanding and added cartoon reactions. Patronising, unhelpful, and wildly misjudged.

HP followed up again (7:44 PM): “Hello Steve, Thank you for contacting HP Support. Sorry to hear that you’ve been facing this issue for the past 12 days without your computer. Sorry for the inconvenience caused. Not to worry. I will do the best to help you to resolve the issue.
Please help me with the serial number of the computer. Please share the picture of the error message on the screen you are getting. Please reply to us with the details.” Rahula\_HP

By this point, I had clearly stated I wasn't looking for support, only accountability. That message had not been read.

Wednesday 4thJune

I said (10:37 AM – via DM): “I’ve already resolved the issue. Emojis and delayed engagement don’t fix anything. I’m not chasing support; I’m flagging the failure.”

HP replied (10:58 AM): “We are sorry for the inconvenience. What can I do to make things right for you?”

Thursday 5th June

I said (1:24 PM – via DM): “I resolved this myself, not thanks to HP or Intel but despite you both. You consciously withheld an essential driver that blocked users from accessing their own systems. That’s not just poor support that’s corporate blackmail. And yes, if we’re going down that route, let’s be honest this message is doing the same in reverse. So here’s what would settle it: 1. Two VIP Paddock Club passes for Silverstone F1 2. Public commitment to making VMD drivers accessible. Do the right thing, and I’ll take the threads down.”

HP replied (4:56 PM): “I would request you to talk to the dedicated Phone Support team regarding this issue. o contact us, click here: https://t.co/vdaY4uSqij.

Step 1: Sign in to the HP Support page using your HP account or create a new account by clicking on “Create Account.”

Step 2: Enter the device serial number, select the product, and click on “other” from the options.

Step 3: Click on “Continue to contact options,” and choose your country/region and language.

Step 4: The support options will now populate based on the warranty status of your device.

We are open 24X7, please get back to us for any assistance,

Thank you for choosing HP.

Take care!
Manasa - HP Social Media Support.
I said (5:14 PM): “If you’d read the thread, you’d know I already have a support account, I already solved this myself. I didn’t ask for technical help, I asked for accountability. So why would I call someone now?”

HP replied (5:58 PM): “We understand your concern, Steve. We request you to take kindly speak the phone support, and they will assist you with this.”

No escalation. No ownership. No answers.

In Closing (finally)

Across 13 days and over 120 hours, I rebuilt what HP and Intel couldn’t even recognise. I diagnosed hardware, rebuilt drivers, rewrote ISOs, and reverse-engineered the install process without their help. I documented every step publicly — not for sympathy, but because no consumer should ever face this alone. When Intel finally reached out (from Folsom, California not an outsourced call centre where it’s cheap labour) they offered a solution that wouldn’t have worked, because they hadn’t even read what version I needed. HP? They only engaged after public pressure, and even then, the real breakthrough came from a volunteer named Paul on their own forum.

So yes, I asked for F1 tickets. Not for compensation, but for acknowledgment. A nod to the sheer effort, the failure of two global tech giants, and the fact that a single user fixed what they couldn’t.

And if anyone’s wondering why I’ve taken this public, it’s simple. Because users deserve better. Because critical drivers like Intel RST VMD version 17.9.6.1019 should never be hidden behind locked installers or corporate indifference. They should be publicly available, in raw extractable format, as free downloads. No gated .exe files. No vanished links. No more brick walls.

That’s my driver now. Pun intended. Shame on you @HP and @Intel

#RightToRepair #TechAccountability #KeepReinventingWaysToSilenceYourProblems #IntelInsideButHelpNowhereOutside

@HP @HPUK @EnriqueJLores @intel @IntelUK @PCMag @tomshardware @verge @techradar @TechCrunch @WhichUK @BBCWatchdog @MartinSLewis @UK_CMA

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

Here's our ticket to Silverstone LOL https://t.co/NNxs5ME87U

[Steve @Steve58806055]

HP, Intel & the 13-Day Driver Disaster — A Customer Fixed What Tech Giants Couldn't
Chapter 1: The HP All-In-One Meltdown

Tuesday 20th May
I’m self-employed and use my HP All-In-One daily. It handles spreadsheets, quotes, pdf, everyday business tasks. In fairness, it’s been brilliant but I was just in the middle of preparing a complicated Excel sheet for a Tender when boom, a power surge to the building caused everything to reboot. Then not long after it did it again. I decide to boot back up in Safe Mode and it was while this was happening “strike 3” came, mid-boot. There the problems started, and I got stuck in perpetual motion of Bitlocker Recovery which then went to “your device ran into a problem and needs to restart. We’ll restart for you” Blue screen with a sad face that I would learn over the next 12 days to hate. Now let me make this very clear, I’m, at this stage not PC Tech Whiz. I get by and am very much self-taught so what ensued was a complete brain drain. I downloaded from Microsoft a Windows 11 installation pack in the form of an ISO. 3 letters I would also grow to detest. It got me absolutely nowhere because I got a message saying, “Driver Missing”. How, is that possible? So I started searching and I mean searching. Every kind of permutation. It’s a HP, look on their site nothing. Intel, it has Intel Core i5, the sticker is right in front of me. I find a driver download, great you’d think, no. At this stage I’ve borrowed a friends Laptop and we hit this recurring problem, the file you download will only execute on the device you download to. Try as I might, you cannot extract the files to place on (a new discovery to me) a “bootable USB”. Time spent this day 8 hours

Wednesday 21st May – Day 2

The words “Driver Missing” were now etched into my soul. I wasn’t ready to give up, but I was starting to realise I might be in over my head. I’d already borrowed a friend’s laptop to try and create a working Windows installer, but nothing was getting me past the same roadblock. Every time I booted from the USB and tried to install Windows, it told me a driver was missing. I started reading every forum I could find, and that’s when something called “Intel VMD” started cropping up. Sounded like a virus, but apparently it was something to do with how the SSD was connected in newer systems. Without that driver, Windows couldn’t see the internal drive. HP’s website had nothing useful. Intel’s site offered a download, but it came as a locked EXE file that wouldn’t open or extract. Not on the HP, not on the borrowed laptop. And even if I did somehow get the files out of it, how was I supposed to load them mid-install? Time spent this day: 10 hours.

Thursday 22nd May – Day 3

I was now three days in and not much closer to getting my machine back. I’d confirmed by now that the missing driver was something called a VMD controller driver. It was supposed to be available from Intel, but every version I found came packaged in a way that only worked if you were running Windows which I wasn’t, because my system was dead. It was a Catch-22. The EXE files wouldn’t open, and trying to extract them using tools on the borrowed laptop got me nowhere. HP’s support page didn’t list VMD drivers at all, just generic chipset stuff that didn’t help. I found Reddit threads full of people in the same boat, some dating back months. The only advice seemed to be “inject the driver manually into your boot media,” but no one explained how to actually do that in plain English. I started looking at tools with names like Rufus, NTLite, and DISM names that may as well have been spells from Harry Potter. Time spent this day: 9 hours. Morale: wearing thin.

Friday 23rd May – Day 4

By this point I’d entered what I started calling the loop of false hope. Every new idea felt promising for about five minutes. I tried NTLite, thinking maybe I could inject the driver into the ISO. It looked powerful but the interface was confusing and clunky, and every time I thought I’d mounted the right image, it either froze, failed to save, or spat out a useless ISO. I uninstalled and reinstalled it twice, but somehow it kept remembering previous sessions as if haunted. Then I tried a tool called Free ISO Creator, only to learn hours later that the ISOs it generated weren’t UEFI bootable, which meant my HP wouldn’t even recognise them. I was burning time chasing tools that couldn’t do what they promised or at least couldn’t do it in the way I needed. All the while the original problem hadn’t changed. I had no access to my machine, and no way to get the driver into Windows Setup. Time spent today: 10 hours. Breakthroughs: 0.

Saturday 24th May – Day 5

I decided to stop trusting quick fixes and start reading everything properly. ImgBurn seemed like the next logical step to create a proper ISO, especially since Free ISO Creator had already wasted a day. I rebuilt the ISO structure by hand, added the drivers I’d managed to scrape together, and used ImgBurn to compile it. This time it looked right. I used a new tool called Ventoy to get around having to wipe the USB stick every time I tested a new image. That part worked. I finally got the HP to boot from the USB and saw the Windows Setup screen for the first time in days. I thought I was in. But as soon as I clicked Install, the same problem came up, no drives detected. I still couldn’t get past the missing storage controller. It felt like I’d climbed a mountain only to realise I was still on the wrong one. Time spent today: 9 hours. Small win, big wall.

Sunday 25th May – Day 6

I was tired of staring at the Windows Setup screen with no drives visible. It was time to change strategy. I’d read about alternative recovery environments and decided to try Hiren’s BootCD PE. I added the ISO to Ventoy, booted it up, and to my surprise, it actually worked. It didn’t crash, and it let me run a few built-in tools. I could finally browse the internal drive and see that it existed, even if I still couldn’t install to it. That small breakthrough gave me hope. I spent the rest of the day exploring what else was out there and downloaded Gandalf’s WinPE next. It looked more powerful, more polished. But when I tried to boot it, I hit a DRIVER PNP WATCHDOG error. I thought maybe it was just that build, so I tried Sergei Strelec’s rescue ISO too. Same result. At least Hiren’s gave me visibility, but none of them could fix the root problem. I was now living inside bootable USBs, trying to patch a system that still didn’t want to live. Time spent today: 10 hours. Boot success rate: one out of three.

Monday 26th May – Day 7

I kept circling back to the same question. Why couldn’t the installer see the internal drive? The answer always came back to VMD. I was convinced I had the right Intel RST driver already, but every time I added it to the USB and loaded it during setup, it showed up but got flagged as incompatible. I started pulling apart the folders inside the driver packs and realised something odd. Most of them only had RAID and AHCI folders. The one I needed, VMD, was missing entirely. That felt important. I found a video on YouTube titled “How to extract Intel RST VMD drivers from setup-rst.exe” and watched it in full. Their interface looked slightly different to mine, but I followed the steps as closely as I could. It didn’t work first time, but the video confirmed I was looking for the right thing. It was the first time I felt like I had a real lead. Then came a huge break through I successfully booted Gandalf’s Windows PE x64 environment on the HP All-in-One using Ventoy in Wimboot mode. For the first time since this recovery nightmare began, the internal SSD became visible not to Windows Setup, but through tools like Disk Management and Command Prompt inside Gandalf.

This wasn’t luck. It was the result of methodical refinement:

I used a Gandalf ISO that supported 11th Gen Intel chipsets (i5-1135G7 with VMD)

I booted using Ventoy’s Wimboot mode, avoiding the DRIVER PNP WATCHDOG failures seen with direct ISO boots

I cleared all conflicting ISOs from the USB stick to avoid firmware confusion

Even though we hadn’t yet injected the proper VMD driver into Gandalf, it included just enough generic driver coverage to see the SSD. BIOS settings were untouched — Secure Boot may have been off, but nothing else was changed. This confirmed what I suspected: the hardware was fine, the SSD wasn’t dead — we were just missing the exact VMD driver required for installation.

This was the first major win. Time spent today: 11 hours. Light at the end of the tunnel: possibly.

Tuesday 27th May – Day 8

Today felt different. I went back through every driver package I’d downloaded over the last week and finally spotted one I hadn’t fully opened. Inside it was a folder marked VMD. Not AHCI, not RAID, VMD. The missing piece. I built a new ISO using ImgBurn, carefully structured the folders, and added only what I needed. No extras, no fluff, just AHCI, RAID, and VMD. I loaded it through Ventoy and clicked the “Previous Version of Setup” option at the bottom of the language screen, something I’d only just realised led to an alternate setup environment. This time, when I clicked Load Driver and browsed into the folders, the VMD drivers actually showed up. Not greyed out. Not flagged as unsigned. Visible, selectable, and clean. I didn’t even try to install Windows. Not yet. I just sat there for a minute, staring at the screen, realising I might finally be in control. Time spent today: 9 hours. Driver status: confirmed visible.

Wednesday 28th May – Day 9

Now that I could finally see the VMD drivers, I wasn’t taking any chances. I stripped the ISO down to just the essential folders AHCI, RAID, and VMD and rebuilt it again from scratch. I wanted to remove any distraction that could cause the installer to trip up. I tested different placement of the folders, tried a few builds with just the VMD set, and even ran a DISM injection directly into the boot.wim and install.wim files to make sure the drivers were there from the start. I checked everything twice. No shortcuts. I tested each ISO through Ventoy, and each time the drivers appeared exactly where they should. The installer still wouldn’t proceed, but for the first time, I knew it was a Windows issue, not a visibility issue. I had the right driver. I just hadn’t found the right install path. Time spent today: 10 hours. Progress: measurable.

Thursday 29th May – Day 10

I submitted a formal support request to Intel via their SSD Management Tools section. I detailed the missing VMD folder, referenced my exact version number, and politely requested access to a working driver. I even signed it off with “PLEASE with roses.” At this point, I was casting lines in every direction, not out of confusion, but because I knew exactly what I needed. I just couldn’t believe it was being kept behind a wall. I reached out on the HP Community Forum and posted a direct message to Paul Tikkanen. I asked if he had access to the Intel RST driver version 17.9.6.1019 in extracted format — ideally with the VMD folder included. Paul responded quickly and shared a ZIP file, but on extracting it, the VMD folder was missing. I explained the issue again, this time in full detail, outlining how the absence of that folder had blocked every single recovery attempt so far. To his credit, Paul took it seriously. He admitted he hadn’t realised HP had stripped those folders from more recent versions and said he would go look through older packages. That reply marked the first time I felt truly heard. Time spent today: 8 hours. Hope: cautiously returning. While HP and Intel were silent or evasive, a community volunteer was trying to solve what two goliaths entire support apparatus couldn’t.

Friday 30th May – Day 11

Paul came back with a gem: https://t.co/CZnBf6EXFt, an older HP package that still contained the original AHCI, RAID, and VMD folders exactly what I’d been trying to source. I replied immediately to confirm it looked correct. This was the first real sign of progress after 10 days of dead ends. While HP and Intel were silent or evasive, a community volunteer solved what their entire support apparatus couldn’t. Time spent today 3.5 hours

Saturday 31st May – Day 12

After nearly two weeks of dead ends, I posted again on the HP Community forum, more out of habit than hope. I’d already gone round in circles with official support, Intel, and every driver version imaginable. Then something shifted. Paul, a community member who’d been following the thread, finally clicked with what I’d been trying to explain for days. I wasn’t after the latest Intel RST drivers I needed a very specific version: 17.9.6.1019, including the VMD folder. That exact combination. For the first time, someone else got it. Paul backed me up, confirmed the gap, and it felt like I wasn’t shouting into the void anymore. I hadn’t solved the install at that point, but the breakthrough wasn’t technical it was emotional. Someone understood. Time spent today: 8 hours. Isolation: broken.

Sunday 1stJune – day 13

That morning, while continuing to experiment with another variant of Gandalf’s PE, an email alert popped up — a reply from the HP Community Forum. Paul had responded.

I opened it cautiously, half expecting another generic workaround or link. But this time, something had clicked. The jigsaw had fallen into place for him. Paul was now a man on a mission. He'd gone back, re-read what I’d shared, and acknowledged it: yes, I was right to be chasing that specific driver version. No, I wasn’t barking up the wrong tree. The VMD folder was missing from most packages. And yes — the version I needed was 17.9.6.1019, complete with .inf files like iaStorVD.inf that no longer shipped in the newer driver sets.

His message felt like a lightbulb moment — not just for him, but for me. I’d spent nearly two weeks being told I was wrong, confused, or asking for something that didn’t exist. Paul confirmed, in detail, that I was on the right track. He validated everything I’d been trying to explain.

That afternoon, while watching the Spanish Grand Prix, I used the very driver set Paul had referenced — version 17.9.6.1019, with the VMD folder fully intact — to build a fresh ISO. I loaded it via Ventoy, launched Setup, and for the first time, the Windows installer recognised the internal SSD. No errors. No warnings. Just progress.

The recovery took less than two hours.

It was over. Not thanks to HP. Not thanks to Intel. But thanks to a volunteer who listened. Paul Tikkanen deserves a medal.

Before we close Chapter 1 I have to leapfrog to today because this next entry is simply astounding.

Thursday 6th June Day 16: Intel Calls. Literally.

This evening I had a missed call from the USA — Folsom, California to be exact. I only knew of Folsom because of Johnny Cash! So I did some digging… and guess who it was? Intel Corporation! Weird, right? A global tech giant calling a UK home user directly over a storage driver issue? How on earth did they even get my mobile number? 11 minutes later: A voicemail confirming it really was Intel. Then an email lands from a polite technician named Symon B., offering to help fix the problem. You know the problem I already solved myself, without any help from Intel or @HP. And in that email? He links me to an article:
“How to Enable Intel® VMD Capable Platforms for RAID or Intel® Optane™” I click through, just to humour myself. It all feels familiar. Sure enough, after a bit more digging, I find myself staring at the same “SSD Management Tools” section I was trawling through 12 days ago. Seven sets of drivers. But guess what’s still missing? You guessed it Version 17.9.6.1019 — the one that actually worked. Still MIA.
Sorry if I sound flippant here but what are you guys playing at? I specifically told them in the only Support Ticket (which is, I’m hoping is why Symon called, VM and emailed) which version I needed, 17.9.6.1019 (I’m thinking of getting that tattooed on my arm by the way). So why bend over backwards to get to speak to me, just to give me the wrong version. You really couldn’t write this.

Chapter 2: HP Accountability Audit

What I said and how HP replied
Sunday 1 June to Thursday 5 June 2025 on X (formerly Twitter

Sunday 1st June

I said (6:17 PM): “Locked out of my own HP thanks to missing VMD drivers. Neither of you made them available. I lost 12 days trying to fix it. Got it working but only thanks to a helpful HP community member. This is being held to ransom.” (@HPSupport and @IntelSupport tagged publicly on X)

HP replied (6:36 PM): “Hi there, thanks for reaching out. I’m glad the HP community helped… please send us a DM with your case ID.” HP Support (X)

Monday 2 June

I said (6:54 PM): “Thanks for the reply. Just baffling that a missing VMD driver left me locked out for 12 days. Once I had it (not from HP), I had it fixed in under 2 hours. If you’re serious about goodwill, how about two Ferrari VIP tickets for Silverstone?” (Public follow-up on X)

HP replied (Tuesday 3 June, 8:14 AM – via DM): “I appreciate your kind and creative suggestion about the Ferrari VIP tickets that made me smile. While I can’t promise tickets, I’ll definitely pass along your message to the relevant team.” Shri\_HP

This was the turning point. Delivered without emojis, the phrase “that made me smile” trivialised the issue. I had lost nearly two weeks due to HP’s omission of a critical driver. I wasn’t joking. The response felt tone deaf and dismissive. This is where my tone changed from patience to public pressure.

Tuesday 3 June

I said (9:57 AM): “Just to clarify the Ferrari VIP ticket suggestion wasn’t a joke. I lost 12 days due to HP’s failure to provide a VMD driver. Fixed it in 2 hours thanks to a community member. Your ‘that made me smile’ reply felt patronising, not helpful.” (Public post on X)

HP replied (10:13 AM – via DM): “We are really sorry for the inconvenience that has been caused from our end it was not our intention to hurt you with our words, Steve 😕Do let me know if there is anything else I can assist you with, I will be happy to help you out. Looking forward to your reply! 🗨️HP Social Media Tech Support 💻”

This reply layered unnecessary emojis onto an already dismissive tone. I hadn’t raised concerns about tone at this point I’d flagged a support failure. Instead of addressing that, HP treated this like a minor misunderstanding and added cartoon reactions. Patronising, unhelpful, and wildly misjudged.

HP followed up again (7:44 PM): “Hello Steve, Thank you for contacting HP Support. Sorry to hear that you’ve been facing this issue for the past 12 days without your computer. Sorry for the inconvenience caused. Not to worry. I will do the best to help you to resolve the issue.
Please help me with the serial number of the computer. Please share the picture of the error message on the screen you are getting. Please reply to us with the details.” Rahula\_HP

By this point, I had clearly stated I wasn't looking for support, only accountability. That message had not been read.

Wednesday 4thJune

I said (10:37 AM – via DM): “I’ve already resolved the issue. Emojis and delayed engagement don’t fix anything. I’m not chasing support; I’m flagging the failure.”

HP replied (10:58 AM): “We are sorry for the inconvenience. What can I do to make things right for you?”

Thursday 5th June

I said (1:24 PM – via DM): “I resolved this myself, not thanks to HP or Intel but despite you both. You consciously withheld an essential driver that blocked users from accessing their own systems. That’s not just poor support that’s corporate blackmail. And yes, if we’re going down that route, let’s be honest this message is doing the same in reverse. So here’s what would settle it: 1. Two VIP Paddock Club passes for Silverstone F1 2. Public commitment to making VMD drivers accessible. Do the right thing, and I’ll take the threads down.”

HP replied (4:56 PM): “I would request you to talk to the dedicated Phone Support team regarding this issue. o contact us, click here: https://t.co/vdaY4uSqij.

Step 1: Sign in to the HP Support page using your HP account or create a new account by clicking on “Create Account.”

Step 2: Enter the device serial number, select the product, and click on “other” from the options.

Step 3: Click on “Continue to contact options,” and choose your country/region and language.

Step 4: The support options will now populate based on the warranty status of your device.

We are open 24X7, please get back to us for any assistance,

Thank you for choosing HP.

Take care!
Manasa - HP Social Media Support.
I said (5:14 PM): “If you’d read the thread, you’d know I already have a support account, I already solved this myself. I didn’t ask for technical help, I asked for accountability. So why would I call someone now?”

HP replied (5:58 PM): “We understand your concern, Steve. We request you to take kindly speak the phone support, and they will assist you with this.”

No escalation. No ownership. No answers.

In Closing (finally)

Across 13 days and over 120 hours, I rebuilt what HP and Intel couldn’t even recognise. I diagnosed hardware, rebuilt drivers, rewrote ISOs, and reverse-engineered the install process without their help. I documented every step publicly — not for sympathy, but because no consumer should ever face this alone. When Intel finally reached out (from Folsom, California not an outsourced call centre where it’s cheap labour) they offered a solution that wouldn’t have worked, because they hadn’t even read what version I needed. HP? They only engaged after public pressure, and even then, the real breakthrough came from a volunteer named Paul on their own forum.

So yes, I asked for F1 tickets. Not for compensation, but for acknowledgment. A nod to the sheer effort, the failure of two global tech giants, and the fact that a single user fixed what they couldn’t.

And if anyone’s wondering why I’ve taken this public, it’s simple. Because users deserve better. Because critical drivers like Intel RST VMD version 17.9.6.1019 should never be hidden behind locked installers or corporate indifference. They should be publicly available, in raw extractable format, as free downloads. No gated .exe files. No vanished links. No more brick walls.

That’s my driver now. Pun intended. Shame on you @HP and @Intel

#RightToRepair #TechAccountability #KeepReinventingWaysToSilenceYourProblems #IntelInsideButHelpNowhereOutside

@HP @HPUK @EnriqueJLores @intel @IntelUK @PCMag @tomshardware @verge @techradar @TechCrunch @WhichUK @BBCWatchdog @MartinSLewis @UK_CMA

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@OfficialJDowson This is just crazy and truly shows how bad the UK really is now

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@KnightsTempOrg Turning our country in to theirs

[Eric Shackleton @EricShackleton]

@onlyfights_ Not deported he just needs to be shot