Windows replacing Gnu/Linux partition with drive letter

I recently moved to Microsoft's Windows 10 because of some apps that wine wouldn't run. I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable Gnu/Linux user. I am trying to set up a dual-boot with windows 10 and solus. These are the steps I followed: 1. I shrank the C:\ partition of the drive, to allow space for Gnu/Linux. (The new partition had 160 gigs). 2. I created a bootable Solus USB with balenaEtcher. 3. I restarted my computer, pressed f2 to enter the BIOS, and selected the USB as the first boot option. I applied these settings and the computer automatically restarted and booted into the live Solus. 4. I went into the KDEPartition Manager, and formatted the 160gb partition into ext4. 5. I applied this, restarted the computer, and started the Installation Manager 6. Upon reaching the "Where should we install?" menu, I selected the "custom" option. 7. I selected my 160gb volume to be the "/". *This may be wrong. I have never installed using the custom menu. I might have need to choose this to be "/home", but no tutorials mentioned this. Also, the 160gb volume showed up as 170gb.* 8. I spammed through the rest of the options, such as username/passwd. 9. I restarted the computer, removing the USB. 10. The computer booted into Windows 10. 11. I though it might be a boot order issue, so I checked the BIOS. There was no Gnu/Linux option. There were 3 Windows options, but that is the way my computer has been for a while, even when using Gnu/Linux. nevertheless, I tried each of them, but all of them predictably booted into Windows. 12. I got a new installation USB with a new iso and tried steps 2-9 again. 10 and 11 were the results, again. 13. I entered Windows' partition manager to see what's what, and windows had replaced that new partition with the drive letter D:\ I am not sure why this is doing this. I am on a Dell Precision Tower 3420, which originally had Windows 10 pre-installed. The default barracuda HHD was too slow, so i used a 120gb SSD with Ubuntu instead. I bought a 500gb m.2 SSD and transfered the old SSD to the m.2. I needed Windows, so I cloned the original HHD to the m.2, wiping Gnu/Linux. Then I tried the aforementioned steps. I do *not* want to use a VM, so please do not include answers involving that. Much thanks in advance!