Cant update to Win 11

[ondma]

I am so frustrated with trying to update my computer to Win 11. I am currently running Win 10 and have downloaded the Win 11 update assistant. When I run the program everything goes properly and seems to be working until the installation starts. Then I get an error message that says "Windows 11 cannot be installed on a flash drive". I am not trying to install it onto a flash drive!! I am trying to update the current install of win 10 on the boot drive. I have checked the bios that the correct boot drive is selected. I get no option during the update to state what drive the update should be installed to. Obviously, it would seem that the update would automatically install onto the boot drive, but that does not seem to be the case.

Am I doing something wrong? I ran the PC check and it said my computer was compatible with Win 11. (cpu is 8700k, OS is Win 10 Pro). Any suggestions how to make this update possible?
I dont really want to do a clean install of Win 11.

 

[Indus]

Is it possible your Windows 10 operating system was setup as a legacy upgrade of Windows 7 (and set to MBR) and it was never converted to UEFI?

 

[ondma]

Is it possible your Windows 10 operating system was setup as a legacy upgrade of Windows 7 (and set to MBR) and it was never converted to UEFI?

Thanks for the response, but no, the original install was Win 10 Pro. I double checked in disk management, and the file system is NTFS. Below is a screenshot of the disk system. "New Volume" is an NVME SSD I installed recently. "Seagate Backup" is an external HDD. I am not sure what the first four entries are. I think the Disk 0 partitions are recovery sectors on C.

 

[Indus]

Thanks for the response, but no, the original install was Win 10 Pro. I double checked in disk management, and the file system is NTFS. Below is a screenshot of the disk system. "New Volume" is an NVME SSD I installed recently. "Seagate Backup" is an external HDD. I am not sure what the first four entries are. I think the Disk 0 partitions are recovery sectors on C.
View attachment 128399

No I'm not talking about NTFS or FAT file system..

i'm talking about MBR or GPT UEFI drive. Both can allow NTFS.

Try https://www.resize-c.com/ or https://www.paragon-software.com/free/pm-express/ software and that'll tell you what kind of setup you have.

If my hunch is right you're still legacy MBR and you'll have to convert it to GPT UEFI and then win 11 will see it. It helps massively if you have another hard drive which it looks like you do.

 

[tcsenter]

Don't use Upgrade Assistant. Just create USB flash drive from the W11 ISO and run SETUP.EXE on the flash drive while you're in Windows 10 (as Administrator account type). It will run as an in-place upgrade, just like you were using an upgrade DVD or something.

 

[mikeymikec]

I think Indus is right: The boot partition in Disk Management should have shown up as an EFI partition if the disk layout was GPT (what's needed for UEFI). Yup, just checked a Win11 laptop here, the boot partition is labelled as an "EFI System Partition".

God know why Windows setup is talking about a flash drive, but with Microsoft's virtually non-existent QA these days it's not surprising.

If you're still in MBR there's good news, there's a utility that comes with Windows called mbr2gpt which will convert the partition layout. I'd suggest some backups beforehand though!

A way to confirm the disk partition layout is to run diskpart from the command line, then while in diskpart run 'list disk'. If your drive doesn't have an asterisk in the GPT column, it's still MBR.

 

[Ottoo]

Change PortableOperatingSystem to 0 in the registry.

It's under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PortableOperatingSystem.

It should clear up the flash drive error.!

 

[Indus]

I think Indus is right: The boot partition in Disk Management should have shown up as an EFI partition if the disk layout was GPT (what's needed for UEFI). Yup, just checked a Win11 laptop here, the boot partition is labelled as an "EFI System Partition".

God know why Windows setup is talking about a flash drive, but with Microsoft's virtually non-existent QA these days it's not surprising.

If you're still in MBR there's good news, there's a utility that comes with Windows called mbr2gpt which will convert the partition layout. I'd suggest some backups beforehand though!

A way to confirm the disk partition layout is to run diskpart from the command line, then while in diskpart run 'list disk'. If your drive doesn't have an asterisk in the GPT column, it's still MBR.

That MBR2GPT didn't work for me. Kept saying you cannot convert a partition which contains your current operating system or something.

I had to:
1. back up the windows drive with a clone
2. boot off the clone
3. wipe the original drive
4. convert it to GPT instead of MBR
5. copy the clone back to the original
6. change settings in bios to detect UEFI drives instead of legacy.
7. boot off the original hard disk again.

Then USB installers could see and install onto hard drives.. royal pain in the 6!

 

[ondma]

I think Indus is right: The boot partition in Disk Management should have shown up as an EFI partition if the disk layout was GPT (what's needed for UEFI). Yup, just checked a Win11 laptop here, the boot partition is labelled as an "EFI System Partition".

God know why Windows setup is talking about a flash drive, but with Microsoft's virtually non-existent QA these days it's not surprising.

If you're still in MBR there's good news, there's a utility that comes with Windows called mbr2gpt which will convert the partition layout. I'd suggest some backups beforehand though!

A way to confirm the disk partition layout is to run diskpart from the command line, then while in diskpart run 'list disk'. If your drive doesn't have an asterisk in the GPT column, it's still MBR.

Dont have much time today, but I will try this when I have a chance.

 

[ondma]

That MBR2GPT didn't work for me. Kept saying you cannot convert a partition which contains your current operating system or something.

I had to:
1. back up the windows drive with a clone
2. boot off the clone
3. wipe the original drive
4. convert it to GPT instead of MBR
5. copy the clone back to the original
6. change settings in bios to detect UEFI drives instead of legacy.
7. boot off the original hard disk again.

Then USB installers could see and install onto hard drives.. royal pain in the 6!

Man, thanks for taking the time to try all that. I know a lot about computers from a theoretical sense, but havent done much with the actual hardware. Not sure I am up to this.

 

[Indus]

Man, thanks for taking the time to try all that. I know a lot about computers from a theoretical sense, but havent done much with the actual hardware. Not sure I am up to this.

You are.. but it will take time.

I instead of windows 11 went to Linux full time but that problem you encountered with USB installer not being able to find disks to install.. I had the very same problem. And I was just as clueless/ scared of the thing as you are now.. but @igor_kavinski helped me out.

My experiences are documented here: https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...and-overcome-microsofts-stranglehold.2630996/

Everything with doing what you're doing is in the very first post!

 

[ondma]

Change PortableOperatingSystem to 0 in the registry.

It's under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PortableOperatingSystem.

It should clear up the flash drive error.!

I saw this on the internet before I started the thread. Seemed like a quick and easy answer. Unfortunately, it didnt work. There is no line at all in the Bios for PortableOperatingSystem. As I understand it, having the entry missing is the same as having it set to 0. Would it be worth it to try adding the line manually and setting it to 0? I didnt try that because I dont like to modify the Registry.

 

[ondma]

So thanks to all who responded. I still am up in the air as to what to do. I understand Win 10 will no longer be supported after October. What does this really mean? No more security updates? Will new games coming out not work on Win 10?

Edit: Effing Microsoft, I thought Win 10 was supposed to be the end all, final OS. I did some more checking, and it looks like they will offer limited, PAID updates to Win 10 after the end of support. Bastards!

 

[mikeymikec]

That MBR2GPT didn't work for me. Kept saying you cannot convert a partition which contains your current operating system or something.

I had to:
1. back up the windows drive with a clone
2. boot off the clone
3. wipe the original drive
4. convert it to GPT instead of MBR
5. copy the clone back to the original
6. change settings in bios to detect UEFI drives instead of legacy.
7. boot off the original hard disk again.

Then USB installers could see and install onto hard drives.. royal pain in the 6!

Check command line switches, there's one like /allowfullos that sorts this

Also, you could have booted from USB and done the conversion from there without /allowfullos or whatever that switch is.

 

[bba-tcg]

That MBR2GPT didn't work for me. Kept saying you cannot convert a partition which contains your current operating system or something.

I had to:
1. back up the windows drive with a clone
2. boot off the clone
3. wipe the original drive
4. convert it to GPT instead of MBR
5. copy the clone back to the original
6. change settings in bios to detect UEFI drives instead of legacy.
7. boot off the original hard disk again.

Then USB installers could see and install onto hard drives.. royal pain in the 6!

In order to avoid that error message, you would need to convert it while: 1. booted into the winre environment, or 2. booted from a USB drive, or 3. while using the /allowfullos switch from an elevated command prompt.

Edit: it looks like mikeymikec and I had the same thought.

 

[ondma]

A little more information:
Here is a screenshot of my files on C: (taken from EaseUSA backup file selection). It says the disk is GPT, but then it says Windows is NTFS. So it looks like your screenshot in post 4. The disk is GPT, but the windows partition is NTFS. (What a clusterf...). If most win 10 computers are like this, there is no way the ordinary user is going to be able to figure out how to update to Win 11. Actually, even as a fairly knowledgeable user with the assistance from all of you on this forum, I'm still not sure I want to risk borking the entire computer.

@Indus: Here is an article from Windows Central detailing how to convert for MBR to GPT using the "mbr2gpt" command without cloning the OS drive and booting from an external disk. Do you think this would work? Still seems like a lot of places for things to go wrong. It says toward the end of the article that it will not work if there are more than 3 partitions, because it needs to create a new partition for the UEFI. This might be why it didnt work for you. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-move-bios-uefi-windows-10

 

[mikeymikec]

MBR / GPT are methods of recording partition layouts.

FAT32 / NTFS / ExFAT are types of file systems that could be used to store data in a partition.

You can have any of those file systems in partitions regardless of the partition layout of the disk being MBR or GPT.

Why would Windows think a drive is a memory stick... Do you have hotplug enabled for your drives? What drives are we talking about, how are they connected to the system, are you using anything other than standard storage drivers for the OS to talk to these drives?

 

[Indus]

A little more information:
Here is a screenshot of my files on C: (taken from EaseUSA backup file selection). It says the disk is GPT, but then it says Windows is NTFS. So it looks like your screenshot in post 4. The disk is GPT, but the windows partition is NTFS. (What a clusterf...). If most win 10 computers are like this, there is no way the ordinary user is going to be able to figure out how to update to Win 11. Actually, even as a fairly knowledgeable user with the assistance from all of you on this forum, I'm still not sure I want to risk borking the entire computer.

@Indus: Here is an article from Windows Central detailing how to convert for MBR to GPT using the "mbr2gpt" command without cloning the OS drive and booting from an external disk. Do you think this would work? Still seems like a lot of places for things to go wrong. It says toward the end of the article that it will not work if there are more than 3 partitions, because it needs to create a new partition for the UEFI. This might be why it didnt work for you. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-move-bios-uefi-windows-10



View attachment 128464

Well if your drive is already GPT it doesn't need to be converted to GPT again. So that raises more questions than it answers that why is Windows 11 not seeing your hard drive if everything is set correctly to UEFI/ GPT.



And for the unrelated bit, I only had 1 partition on that windows drive as you saw. The other 2 small ones were taking by the windows bootloader and system. I can't even assign a letter to them in windows.

I have an idea though.. reformat your USB flash drive.. put ventoy on there first and then instead of how you would convert a USB flash drive to bootable.. instead just copy over the whole windows 11 operating system. See if that fixes whatever is fubar.

After using Linux full time for a month.. I swear linux might seem complicated at first but it's mostly just the user not knowing how to do stuff.. once you follow google search advice, it's quite simpler than windows which leaves you at its mercy of does it like you or not that day.

 

[ondma]

Well if your drive is already GPT it doesn't need to be converted to GPT again. So that raises more questions than it answers that why is Windows 11 not seeing your hard drive if everything is set correctly to UEFI/ GPT.



And for the unrelated bit, I only had 1 partition on that windows drive as you saw. The other 2 small ones were taking by the windows bootloader and system. I can't even assign a letter to them in windows.

I have an idea though.. reformat your USB flash drive.. put ventoy on there first and then instead of how you would convert a USB flash drive to bootable.. instead just copy over the whole windows 11 operating system. See if that fixes whatever is fubar.

After using Linux full time for a month.. I swear linux might seem complicated at first but it's mostly just the user not knowing how to do stuff.. once you follow google search advice, it's quite simpler than windows which leaves you at its mercy of does it like you or not that day.

I have used Linux briefly to boot a drive with a defective Windows install, but never as my main operating system. My primary use outside of the internet is gaming and occasional encoding. I also use Gamepass a lot, and from what I can tell, it does not work on Linux.

 

[tcsenter]

This might be related to one of those partitions being ESP or OEM? I only have four partitions on my Windows 11 system C: drive:

100MB FAT32 EFI (System, Active)
16MB (Some MS reserved, hidden from MS Disk Management but exposed by third party partition tool, no file system specified)
237GB (Windows partition, Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Basic Data Partition)
630MB (WinRE Recovery partition)

Are you up-to-date on all Windows 10 updates? Unplug any external storage drives (except the USB flash drive). Did you try the in-place upgrade method I outlined above?

 

[ondma]

This might be related to one of those partitions being ESP or OEM? I only have four partitions on my Windows 11 system C: drive:

100MB FAT32 EFI (System, Active)
16MB (Some MS reserved, hidden from MS Disk Management but exposed by third party partition tool, no file system specified)
237GB (Windows partition, Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Basic Data Partition)
630MB (WinRE Recovery partition)

Are you up-to-date on all Windows 10 updates? Unplug any external storage drives (except the USB flash drive). Did you try the in-place upgrade method I outlined above?

It is a prebuilt system, a Powerspec from Microcenter. As for the updates, something is borked there too. If I go to the Windows Update page, it says "Your device is missing important security and quality fixes." But then when I click the "check for updates" box I get no updates. If I click on the "view optional updates" I get some driver updates, but have not tried to install those. Funniest of all is the big green checked box that says "This PC can run windows 11". Well maybe it can, you just cant install it.

 

[ondma]

Here are the optional driver updates that are listed. Note that most of them are very old. That, and the fact that it says the drivers should be updated automatically, has made me reluctant to install any of them.

 

[bba-tcg]

Stop the Windows Update service and rename the softwaredistribution folder in the Windows directory, reboot and run Windows Update again.

 

[tcsenter]

It is a prebuilt system, a Powerspec from Microcenter. As for the updates, something is borked there too. If I go to the Windows Update page, it says "Your device is missing important security and quality fixes." But then when I click the "check for updates" box I get no updates. If I click on the "view optional updates" I get some driver updates, but have not tried to install those. Funniest of all is the big green checked box that says "This PC can run windows 11". Well maybe it can, you just cant install it.
View attachment 128469

There was an issue on W10 awhile back where one of the updates wouldn't apply if the WinRE Recovery partition was not large enough. The default partition size created by Windows SETUP had been 530MB (same as you have). People were having to increase the size of that partition to > 600MB. e.g.

Downtown Doug Brown » How to fix Windows 10 KB5034441 update installation error 0x80070643

www.downtowndougbrown.com

Check through Windows Updates history to see if KB5034441 was successful. Or any other failed (still outstanding) updates, really.