Question Struggling to get motherboard ready for Windows 11 upgrade

spdragoo

Junior Member
Apr 15, 2018
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Mods, FYI, if this doesn't belong in this section, please move it.

Yes, I understand I missed the deadline. I'd put it off during the summer, & some personal emergencies took a bit of precedence. My laptop converted just fine, but had to change some BIOS settings on my desktop.

Which is where I'm running into problems.

System information:
  • CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X
  • Motherboard: ASUS PRIME X570-P
    • BIOS: v. 3001
  • RAM: 16GB
  • Drive setup:
    • Primary (C:): 256GB SSD
    • Secondary #1: 4TB HDD
    • Secondary #2: 1TB HDD
    • Secondary #3: 1TB HDD

I've already verified & confirmed that TPM 2.0 is enabled in the BIOS. My issue is that, when I first set up this machine some years back (was originally a Windows 7 machine, then upgraded for free to Win10), I set up the boot SSD as an MBR drive...& Secure BIOS needs to be GPT.

I have attempted to run the MBR2GPT.exe tool multiple times, & keep being told "Cannot find room for the EFI system partition" and "MBR2GPT: Conversion Failed".

Without the conversion to GPT file format, I can't install Win11. Tried multiple times, & I'm not comfortable with any of the so-called 'registry hacks' that are supposed to fool the installer (particularly since they focus on the TPM portion, which isn't a problem).

I do not want to do a "clean" install, because I don't need to...& shouldn't need to when my laptop didn't need one.

I've included screenshots from CPU-Z (CPU & motherboard), Disk Management, & the command prompt (which I ran as an administrator).

I've seen some sites that might indicate that it's the "System Reserved" and "Recovery Partition" portions of Disk 0 (the SSD). I'm just worried because I don't think I ever made a full ISO copy of the Win10 installation disk (just maybe have the original Win7 DVD somewhere), so I don't want to ruin anything on the SSD that will make my PC unbootable. So do I just remove those partitions? Or do I need to do something else?
 

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bba-tcg

Senior member
Apr 8, 2010
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thecomputerguylbb.com
Since you plan on upgrading to 11, you could delete the recovery partition, extend drive c: and then run the mbr2gpt command again. It should be able to shrink drive c: enough to make the efi partition. Then, when you do the upgrade, Windows 11 should remake the recovery (winre) partition, even if it ends up being slightly smaller.

As always, a backup before doing this is recommended but probably not required.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
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Back up the recovery partition before deleting it is one bit of advice I'd give.

I'm wondering though if it's failing to shrink the OS partition. What happens if you shrink the OS partition by say 200MB, leave a gap, then run mbr2gpt?
 

bba-tcg

Senior member
Apr 8, 2010
959
581
136
thecomputerguylbb.com
Back up the recovery partition before deleting it is one bit of advice I'd give.

I'm wondering though if it's failing to shrink the OS partition. What happens if you shrink the OS partition by say 200MB, leave a gap, then run mbr2gpt?
mbr2gpt would still want to shrink the OS partition.

Edit: If it wasn't so inflexible, it could just as easily shrink the recovery partition. His screenshot shows that the recovery partition is empty - having 851 MB free space.