Added post on windows 11 upgrade

Author: andrewreeman

_posts/2024-09-10-windows-11-upgrade.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Windows 11 upgrade
+date: 2024-09-10 06:00 +0100
+categories: misc
+excerpt_separator: <!--more-->
+---
+
+<section>
+<h1>Experience upgrading from Windows 10 to 11</h1>
+<!--more-->
+
+<p>I recently upgraded my gaming PC from Windows 10 to 11. I couldn't find a blog post or guide that solved the issues I encountered so thought I'd put everything in one place here.</p>
+
+After upgrading the motherboard to one that is [TPM 2.0 enabled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module) I expected this to be plain sailing.
+
+Running the PC Health Check application returned a message stating that "TPM 2.0 must be supported and enabled on this PC". Well that sucks since this seemed to be enabled in the bios.
+
+It turns out the reason this isn't actually enabled is because the boot drive was still in old nasty `MBR` format instead of `GPT`. GPT format is required to support `UEFI` and `TPM 2.0`.
+A bit of info on the basics of this can be found [here](https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Some_basics_of_MBR_v/s_GPT_and_BIOS_v/s_UEFI).
+
+I wanted to avoid reinstalling Windows so after a bit of googling found that it's possible to use [MBR2GPT](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt) to convert it. I'm not sure why but I decided to do this using [Windows PE](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/winpe-create-usb-bootable-drive?view=windows-11) (Windows Preinstallation Environment). This would let me boot into Windows PE which would have full control of the disk.
+
+## Windows PE
+
+The Microsoft guide on creating a Windows PE drive to boot didn't really gel with me and I ended up using this guide instead:
+https://recoverit.wondershare.com/windows-pe/how-to-create-a-windows-pe-bootable-usb-drive.html
+
+Long story short, download [Windows ADK](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/windows-assessment-deployment-kit). But unlike the guide says, make sure to install the ADK one that comes with `Windows PE add-on`. Then we can use the ADK installer to install the `Deployment Tools` and `Windows Preinstallation Environment`.
+
+It was then just a case of running `Windows Deployment and Imaging Tools Environment` as admin and copying the windows PE files to a FAT32 formatted USB.
+First create a copy of the Windows PE files using the following command:
+`copype amd64 C:\WinPE`. This will create files for a 64 bit build in the C:\WinPE directory.
+
+Then install these files to the usb stick using something like:
+`MakeWinPEMedia /UFD C:\WinPE P:`. Here P: is the drive letter.
+
+Then just reboot and make sure we boot from the usb.
+
+## MBR2GPT - First blocker
+
+Great. So now the plan was to use `MBR2GPT` to convert the disk, make sure TPM is enabled in bios and install Windows 11.
+
+We can run a validation step before we actually convert the disk.
+`mbr2gpt /validate /disk:0 `.
+Unfortunately....running this resulted in this error:
+`Disk layout validation failed for disk 0`.
+What a useful error message this is. Why did it fail? Who knows...
+
+From a bit of googling around I stumbled on a forum with this issue:
+https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-10/mbr2gpt-disk-layout-validation-failed/m-p/175166/page/2
+
+In here there was some posts relating to the number of partitions.
+Checking disk management back in Windows showed that I had 4 partitions on the disk instead of the desired 3. There were 2 recovery partitions for some reason.
+Taking a gamble, decided to delete the first recovery partition and extend the main partition.
+
+Time to try the validation step again...
+
+## MBR2GPT - Second blocker
+
+This time we get a new error, which should be counted as progress.
+`Cannot find OS partition(s) for disk 0 `.
+Well that's a strange error since I'm pretty sure it has an OS on it right? I'm not sure this error was occurring but found the solution to this in another forum search:
+https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/issues-using-mbr2gpt-for-windows-11-upgrade/a4a4e379-ff61-4624-8df7-a92580e14212
+
+Basically use [`bcdboot`](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/bcdboot-command-line-options-techref-di?view=windows-11) to copy some bootfiles to one of the partition. I didn't have full confidence in this but after seeing that the legend that is [Scott Hanselman use this](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/switching-my-windows-7-boot-disk-from-d-to-c-with-bcdboot-rather-than-bcdedit) that seemed good enough.
+
+I ran `bcdboot c:\windows /s c:` and then went into disk management and marked the C drive as 'active'. I think that second step might be optional and it's worth trying without doing it.
+
+## MBR2GPT - third time lucky
+
+Running validation this time...passed ok. Woo.
+The next step was running convert by doing:
+`mbr2gpt /validate /disk:0 `.
+This ran ok with no issues. Happy days.
+
+I then went into my MFI BIOS and changed the boot mode from `Legacy + UEFI` to just `UEFI`. Also ensuring the TPM stuff was enabled too.
+
+## Install Windows 11
+
+Right, last step. Boot back into Windows 10. Ran the `PC Health Check` app. This showed all green ticks. This navigated me to windows update to install windows 11...annnd....windows update stated that the PC doesn't meet the system requirements. What??
+
+Basically [the answer](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/pc-health-check-says-im-eligible-for-windows-11/b54bb93e-8eac-4019-bb48-125498b36059) to this was...just install Windows 11 anyway (I wonder if we could have done that from the start...I don't want to know). Installed Windows 11 using the [installation assistant](https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/software-download/windows11?3ffbea20-eb11-4a96-85d6-f356b820d828=True) and this worked absolutely fine :-)
+
+Hopefully this post might help some people save time as I was sprawled out across google with hundreds of tabs not really knowing what I was doing.
+
+</section>