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Load a Missing Storage Driver in Sergei Strelec WinPE with Drvload

You boot Strelec on a new laptop and the internal SSD simply is not there — no drive, no partitions, nothing to repair. The disk is fine; WinPE just lacks its storage controller driver. This guide fixes it live with drvload, and then makes the fix permanent.

✍️ Technical Anshu🧰 Sergei Strelec WinPE⏱️ 7 minute read
🎥 Full video — the invisible-drive problem on new laptops and the driver fix, shown live

Modern laptops route their NVMe SSD through Intel VMD or RAID controllers that a generic WinPE cannot see out of the box. The symptom is an empty disk list, and the cure is always the same: give WinPE the controller driver. You can load it once, live, with the drvload command, or place it in the stick's driver folder so every future boot loads it automatically.

Disk Management Inside Strelec — Before the Driver
Disk 0 — USB stick (Strelec)Online
Internal NVMe SSDNOT SHOWN
Drive letters C, D (customer data)MISSING
Hardware — Intel VMD ControllerNO DRIVER
The classic new-laptop symptom — WinPE sees only itself because the storage controller has no driver (illustrative panel).
1

Confirm It Is a Driver Problem, Not a Dead Disk

  1. Open Disk Management or a partition tool inside Strelec — if only the USB stick appears, note it
  2. Open Device Manager in the PE and look for an unknown storage or RAID controller
  3. Check the laptop BIOS — if the BIOS itself cannot see the SSD, that is hardware or a BIOS setting, not WinPE

If the BIOS sees the disk and WinPE does not, you have the driver gap. Continue.

2

Get the Right Driver Package

You need the storage driver in unpacked form — a folder containing the .inf file with its .sys and .cat partners. For Intel VMD and RST machines this is the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver from the laptop maker's support page; AMD RAID and other controllers have equivalents on their makers' pages.

  1. On a working PC, download the storage driver for the exact laptop model
  2. If it arrives as an .exe, extract it — most vendor installers can be unpacked with 7-Zip
  3. Copy the unpacked folder onto any USB stick or a spare corner of the Strelec stick
3

Load It Live with Drvload

  1. Inside Strelec, press Win + R, type cmd and press Enter
  2. Point drvload at the driver's INF file, for example: drvload E:\Drivers\iaStorVD.inf — use your real drive letter and file name
  3. Wait for the success message, then reopen Disk Management or run diskpart followed by list disk

The internal SSD should now appear with its partitions. A drvload lasts only for this session — reboot the PE and it is gone, which is what the next step fixes.

4

Make It Permanent in the SSTR Driver Folder

So you never repeat this at a customer's desk, store the driver on the stick itself:

  1. Copy the unpacked driver folder into the drivers area under SSTR\USER — the MY_DRIVERS_x64 folder on current builds
  2. Keep one subfolder per controller or laptop model, named clearly
  3. Reboot into Strelec — drivers placed there are installed automatically during boot

Do not switch the BIOS from VMD or RAID to AHCI as a shortcut on a machine whose Windows was installed in RAID mode — Windows will then fail to boot with an inaccessible-boot-device error. Loading the driver is the clean fix.

🔴 Never install video or other huge drivers this way: the author warns that very large drivers placed in the auto-load folders slow every WinPE boot for everyone. Storage, network and WLAN drivers only.

🎥 Watch the Complete Video Guide

Every step shown live on a real PC — download, USB creation and the full Strelec toolkit tour.

▶️ Watch Full Video
❓ Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly does drvload do inside WinPE?

Drvload is a built-in WinPE command that installs a driver from its .inf file into the currently running PE session. It is temporary — the driver loads immediately, works until you reboot, and leaves no changes behind, which makes it perfect for testing a driver before storing it on the stick.

My driver folder has many INF files. Which one do I load?

For Intel storage it is normally the file with a name like iaStorVD.inf inside the extracted RST package. If several storage INFs exist, load the controller one, then check list disk — loading a wrong INF is harmless, it simply will not match any hardware.

Can I preload Wi-Fi drivers the same permanent way?

Yes. Unpacked WLAN and network drivers placed in the same SSTR\USER driver folders load at boot, after which PENetwork can connect. Saved Wi-Fi profiles can also be pre-placed so the PE joins your workshop network automatically.

This guide is based on the Technical Anshu video on Sergei Strelec WinPE • Stuck on any step? Ask in the video comments — you will get a reply there 🙏