Prepping my PC for Windows 11 upgrade

[dr3ams]

The steps I had to take to prep my PC for a Windows 11 upgrade (not a clean install).

1. Check to see if hardware is Windows 11 compatible.
2. Check in System Information for the BIOS Mode. If it is Legacy, then it has to be changed to UEFI in BIOS. Can only be done if the boot sector in the partition is GPT (GUID partition table). Follow the procedure to convert the partition below. Using this method to convert from MBR to GPT will not format or harm your partition, but as always, you should backup your drive before attempting anything like this.
3. Check boot drive's partition for boot layout. Go to Device Manager > Disk Drives > right mouse click on drive and select Properties > click Volumes tab > click Populate. If the boot layout is MBR (master boot record), then the drive has to be converted tp GPT.
4. TPM (trusted platform module) activation in BIOS either per hardware or software emulation (for my board I enabled fTPM in BIOS).
5. Covert MBR to GPT using Windows mbr2gpt tool.

Before converting MBR to GPT:

Check the amount of partitions on the boot drive, cannot be more than 3. If there are more than three, then a partition has to be deleted before converting to GPT. If you need to delete a recovery partition, then follow the instructions below on How To Delete A Recovery Partition. Make sure that all data is backed up from the partition you are deleting.

BE VERY CAREFUL WHICH PARTITION YOU CHOOSE! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DELETE THE PARTITION YOU ARE BOOTING FROM (where Windows is installed)!

How to delete a recovery partition:

• Open CMD with admin rights
• Type diskpart
• Type list disk
• Type select disk (and then the number of the disk)
• Type list partition
• Type select partition (and then the number of the partition)
• Type delete partition override

After deleting the partition(s): go to Disk Management, right click on the boot partition, click on Extend Volume, choose the Unallocated partition(s) to absorb.

Convert MBR to GPT:

• Open CMD with admin rights
• Type mbr2gpt.exe /convert
• If an error occurs that states "can only be used from the Windows preinstallation environment", then type mbr2gpt.exe /convert /allowfullos

6. Disable CSM in BIOS
7. Enable UEFI Only in BIOS
8. Reboot PC…after reboot, PC is ready to install Windows 11

This is various info I found on the net and used to prep my PC for Windows 11. Maybe this will help someone here having problems upgrading.

 

[beers]

That sounds fun.

The prompt before the installer seemed to hang -forever- on mine, I thought it hard locked or something.

 

[dr3ams]

That sounds fun.

The prompt before the installer seemed to hang -forever- on mine, I thought it hard locked or something.

What a lot of users are going to encounter is their PCs booting into BIOS, instead of Windows, after they have enabled UEFI and disabled CSM (Compatibility Support Module). This is because the boot sector of the partition is still MBR and needs to be converted to GPT. Unfortunately this is what happened to me.

I assume if you do a clean install that the Windows installer automatically installs GPT and all the user has to do is a BIOS setup. I'm not sure how that would work, considering that Windows 11 needs UEFI enabled and the CSM disabled and that can only be done before you install it. If your partition is loading MBR, then you would have to perform the process listed above.

Since I haven't done a clean install with Windows 11, I'm just guessing...

 

[beers]

Since I haven't done a clean install with Windows 11, I'm just guessing...

Seemed fairly straightforward, the installer will create GPT volumes on clean disks but also did that for w10, although my system didn't have any legacy BIOS dependencies. I still had to sideload the AMD RAID driver that was packaged for w10, but otherwise it's basically the same windows 10 installer. Creating your own hacky bootable ISO via USB seemed like a PITA with layers of partitioning to account for secure boot/FAT32/NTFS.

 

[dr3ams]

...the installer will create GPT volumes on clean disks but also did that for w10

I haven't performed a clean install since Windows 7. I upgraded directly to 10 an then to 11, which is why my system was still using MBR. One of these days I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do a clean install...probably a lot crap laying around in my system.