Windows 10 Technical Preview, Installing “media driver your computer needs is missing”

I had the above error installing windows 10 technical preview and hope my experience may help someone else.

I downloaded the preview ISO image from MSDN subscriber downloads. I attempted to burn the image to DVD using Nero burner. Nero said the ISO had unexpected length, do I want to fix it? I should have stopped at that point and investigated, but being on my way out the door, I left it to burn anyway.

A couple of days later I slapped a new SSD into my machine. Then booting from the DVD of the technical preview installer, I get the error shown below;

Windows 8 "A media driver your computer needs is missing" error

A media driver your computer needs is missing. This could be a DVD, USB or Hard disk driver. If you have a CD, DVD,  or USB flash drive with the driver on it, please insert it now.

Note: If the installation media for Windows is in the DVD drive or on a USB drive, you can safely remove it for this step.

This reminds me that the motherboard is 4 years old, so I go update the BIOS and SATA drivers on the existing windows and on the motherboard as it needs doing anyway. Half an hour later I’m back to the same issue, the above message when I try to run the installer. It is then I remember the message message from a couple of days previously, that I’d pushed to the back of my mind and forgotten. That message burning the image gave me an uneasy feeling, so to be certain I got the image downloaded again and checked it against the checksum on the download page, it passed. This time burning the fresh ISO raised no issues in Nero.

This time the Windows 10 install went though like lightening, with me up and running in no time.

Lessons learned

The CRC checksum provided on the download pages are worth using as downloads are not always perfect, and even a corrupt ISO will run in a fashion, making it unobvious there is an issue.