Solved Can't get 11 installed

RobbyK · Jul 17, 2021

I'm running a Dell laptop, TB HD, quad core Intel, 8g ram, So I want to dual boot, so I don't lose my good install of 10 if 11 goes sideways. So first ting I did, I had a 750g partition that had like 5g of stuff, so I moved that, deleted the partition, created a new partition, labeling it W11. I got my 10 install usb out of the drawer, I've had it since 10 came out, I used it just a few weeks ago to reinstall windows on a friends pc, so I know it''s still good. I was told I would have to install a second copy of 10 then go through windows update to get 11.

Restarted, went into install mode, got down to the actual install screen and got the error "Not enough space on this drive to complete action" or whatever exact words are. I'm trying to install on a 750gb partition,, I know there's enough room, if not I don't want 11, LOL. so, I backed out, double checked some stuff online, checked my bios, everything is right, tried to install again, same error. So I called a friend and was talking to him about it. He was nice enough that he went to what is the website, starts with "uu" or something, any way, he built me an 11 iso. So I downloaded it, used Rufus to put in on a usb, tried to install it, got the same no space error.

So what am I doing wrong. I have installed probably 1000 OS's in my life. I remember running into this problems about 15 years ago, I just can't remember how I got around it. I'm getting to the age my memory is going the opposite direction that I am.

Any suggestions will be welcome. Thank you so much for helping. I know it has to be something easy, I just can't think.

vers. 21H1 (OS Build 19043 1083)

Ghot · Jul 17, 2021

RobbyK said:
I'm running a Dell laptop, TB HD, quad core Intel, 8g ram, So I want to dual boot, so I don't lose my good install of 10 if 11 goes sideways. So first ting I did, I had a 750g partition that had like 5g of stuff, so I moved that, deleted the partition, created a new partition, labeling it W11. I got my 10 install usb out of the drawer, I've had it since 10 came out, I used it just a few weeks ago to reinstall windows on a friends pc, so I know it''s still good. I was told I would have to install a second copy of 10 then go through windows update to get 11.

Restarted, went into install mode, got down to the actual install screen and got the error "Not enough space on this drive to complete action" or whatever exact words are. I'm trying to install on a 750gb partition,, I know there's enough room, if not I don't want 11, LOL. so, I backed out, double checked some stuff online, checked my bios, everything is right, tried to install again, same error. So I called a friend and was talking to him about it. He was nice enough that he went to what is the website, starts with "uu" or something, any way, he built me an 11 iso. So I downloaded it, used Rufus to put in on a usb, tried to install it, got the same no space error.

So what am I doing wrong. I have installed probably 1000 OS's in my life. I remember running into this problems about 15 years ago, I just can't remember how I got around it. I'm getting to the age my memory is going the opposite direction that I am.

Any suggestions will be welcome. Thank you so much for helping. I know it has to be something easy, I just can't think.

vers. 21H1 (OS Build 19043 1083)

Maybe you could post a screenshot of Disk Management.

Fabler2 · Jul 17, 2021

I created a 100GB unallocated space to install 11 on. You can name the partition after Win 11 installs.

RobbyK · Jul 17, 2021

Fabler2 said:
I created a 100GB unallocated space to install 11 on. You can name the partition after Win 11 installs.

So it needs to be unallocated space to start with?

Fabler2 · Jul 17, 2021

RobbyK said:
So it needs to be unallocated space to start with?

Yes. I always install to an unallocated space. You can delete the partition during install, though, for a Dev version of Windows 100 GB should be more than enough IMHO.

RobbyK · Jul 17, 2021

Maybe this will help. Thanks

Fabler2 said:
I created a 100GB unallocated space to install 11 on. You can name the partition after Win 11 installs.

RobbyK · Jul 17, 2021

I created a 100GB unallocated space to install 11 on. You can name the partition after Win 11 installs

I did this, Then tried to install W11, then for good measure W10, both installers gave the same "not enough free space" error.
Here's the new layout, there's a 109GB unallocated, then New Volume is the rest of that 750GB partition.

Fabler2 · Jul 18, 2021

I simply created an unallocated space at the end of the drive. Shortened the C drive and moved the recovery partition to the left. The red rectangle shows where I installed 11.

However your partitions need to be sorted out by a partition expert. Hopefully one will come along as yours are too confusing for me.

RobbyK · Jul 18, 2021

Fabler2 said:
However your partitions need to be sorted out by a partition expert. Hopefully one will come along as yours are too confusing for me.

Unfortunately that is how they came from dell, except I did shorten C:, my original intention was to put Windows on one partition, and my files one another. Long story but I just feel safer that way whether it is or not. But I did end up leaving everything on C: and just never got rid of the extra partition. I never understood why I needed like 10 recovery/system partitions. But if dell put them there, I'm going to leave them.

johnlgalt · Jul 18, 2021

If you're not using the partition with the drive letter J, you could try to delete it as well, and then see if Windows 11 will install to the full 750 GB partition unallocated.

My reason is this - you can always shrink it again if you want to make another partition if the installation is successful. In reading your original post, it seems that J and F did not exist and it was exactly like this, a full 750 GB partition - this time leave it a full 750 GB unallocated (don't partition it,) and try installing again.

It's just very oddly placed, if that 750 GB partition came from your original System partition for Windows 10, was that F: drive partition also a part of it? Because normally when you shrink in Windows it shrinks from the end of the partition.

3rd party tools do allow you to do things like this more robustly, though, like Shrinking from the front end of the partition (and moving the data to the free space after). Or they used to - haven't used any of them in a while....

NavyLCDR · Jul 18, 2021

The error more than likely means you don't have enough free space in your EFI System Partition for new boot files and has nothing to do with free space for the OS itself. Since in post #7 you have unallocated space next to your EFI System Partition, increase its size to 250 MB <- notice that is MegaBytes and not GB.

I recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard Free for manipulating partitions, especially system partitions:

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

As an all-in-one free partition manager and disk manager software, MiniTool Partition Wizard Free helps manage disk space safely on Windows 11/10/8/7.

www.partitionwizard.com

Dru2 · Jul 18, 2021

johnlgalt said:
Because normally when you shrink in Windows it shrinks from the end of the partition.

3rd party tools do allow you to do things like this more robustly, though, like Shrinking from the front end of the partition (and moving the data to the free space after). Or they used to - haven't used any of them in a while....

They do. I still have a copy of Paragon's Hard Disk Manager, and it still works. My older 16.5 version still works.

RobbyK · Jul 18, 2021

johnlgalt said:
If you're not using the partition with the drive letter J, you could try to delete it as well, and then see if Windows 11 will install to the full 750 GB partition unallocated.

Did this, then moved to the next suggestion,

NavyLCDR said:
The error more than likely means you don't have enough free space in your EFI System Partition for new boot files and has nothing to do with free space for the OS itself. Since in post #7 you have unallocated space next to your EFI System Partition, increase its size to 250 MB <- notice that is MegaBytes and not GB.

I recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard Free for manipulating partitions, especially system partitions:

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

As an all-in-one free partition manager and disk manager software, MiniTool Partition Wizard Free helps manage disk space safely on Windows 11/10/8/7.

www.partitionwizard.com

I did install MiniTool, I was going to find a different partition tool anyway. I'm going to need some help however on this, if someone doesn't mind. When you look at the screenshot you'll see that I started spacing out the unallocated space, but I hit an unmovable object. First I assigned a drive letter to everything I could, only to make identifying each one separately at least until I get this done.

The third from the left, is (Other) 20mb, then I have a 20mb Unallocated. I can not find a program that will move the Other, to the right, to get the unallocated next to "L: (Fat32) 100mb". I can't resize the "Other", partition either, so I will say that "L: " isn't resizable either.

At this point I still get past the no space error. I know somebody will figure it out, I'm not worried about that.

Thanks for everything everybody has done.

NavyLCDR · Jul 18, 2021

Wow you have a mess. The 16 MB (Other) partition is the Microsoft System Reserved Partition (MSR). Don't confuse that with a System Reserved partition on an MBR disk, completely different. Since you don't want to mess with recovery partitions, and I have no idea what 22 MB F: is, I would delete the 16 MB (other partition). Expand L: to the left to fill the 36 MB unallocated space. Then let MiniTool Partition Wizard make all the changes. After finished with MiniTool, open a command prompt with admin ("Run as admin") and run the following commands to recreate the MSR in the next available empty space:

Code:

diskpart
select disk 0
create part MSR size=16
exit
exit

Reboot the computer, then try the install again.

RobbyK · Jul 18, 2021

NavyLCDR said:
Wow you have a mess. The 16 MB (Other) partition is the Microsoft System Reserved Partition (MSR). Don't confuse that with a System Reserved partition on an MBR disk, completely different. Since you don't want to mess with recovery partitions, and I have no idea what 22 MB F: is, I would delete the 16 MB (other partition). Expand L: to the left to fill the 36 MB unallocated space. Then let MiniTool Partition Wizard make all the changes. After finished with MiniTool, open a command prompt with admin ("Run as admin") and run the following commands to recreate the MSR in the next available empty space:

Code:

diskpart select disk 0 create part MSR size=16 exit exit

Reboot the computer, then try the install again.

Good news and bad news. This worked like a charm, NavyLCDR is a god. Now the bad news, got loaded up, did the setup, it stopped to do some updates, restarted, when the sign in page should have loaded, the screen turned blue, the cursor showed up, I let it sit there 15 min, no luck. I tried to go in and do a startup repair, that didn't work, then I tried to roll back the updates, and got an error message "updates are pending, unable to rollback", or something similar to that. I thought about just doing a system reset, but I would be right back in this spot. I had other stuff I needed to do, So I"m going to take a break, and get back on it in the morning.

THANK YOU NAVYLCDR

NavyLCDR · Jul 19, 2021

Every now and then I get lucky...

RobbyK · Jul 19, 2021

Does anyone have an idea about why I'm getting a blank screen (it is blue, but not a bluescreen, it's just theme blue) but a blank screen where the cursor works, but it won't load. As I said, when I tried to roll back the update is says "Updates pending unable to roll back update", but it won't load far enough to finish downloading the update.

What's going on, and how do I get passed it? Thanks to everyone that has helped so far, and those that are about to help.

NavyLCDR · Jul 19, 2021

It sounds like it is a hardware driver issue. Did you start with the latest ISO file available, version 22000.71? You are probably looking at a reinstall of Windows 11 and starting over.

RobbyK · Jul 19, 2021

Well, the third restart and it starting working. So I played around in W11 for a little bit, then needed to get back in W10 for something. That was 4.5 hour ago, and I'm just now getting to where I could get back online. I'm in W11 now, but the boot loader does not recognize W10 as being there. I've pulled my W10 rescue, and installer usb's both out to try and locate W10 on the disk. No luck, I've installed BCDEdit or EasyBCD, don't remember which at the moment, trying to re-add W10 to the boot menu, no luck. At this point W11 is fully functioning, but it seems that W10 has been removed from the boot menu. I'm probably wrong but at least you know what it seems like.

Another problem, this one should be a little easier, and I think I know what it will take, I just hope it's something easier. I didn't realize it, until after I got W11 Installed, the Activation code that came with it, failed, so I tried the one that was with W10. It failed also. That's when I realized that W11 is Pro, and W10 is Home, But the inclduded code should have worked. I would really like to drop W11 back down to home. Is that possible without reinstalling?

NavyLCDR · Jul 20, 2021

To downgrade Pro to Home requires changing registry entries and then do an in place re-install of Windows:

Downgrading from Pro to Home - Windows 10 Help Forums

I downgraded from Windows 10 Pro to Windows 10 Home without losing personal files and apps today. The process took approximately two hours, and it was pretty scary, for obvious reasons. I had "researched" for the best procedure prior, but most o

www.tenforums.com

Does your Windows 10 partition have a drive letter assigned in Windows 11? Can you explore the Windows 10 partition using File Explorer? If it has a drive letter, open a command prompt with admin privileges ("Run as administrator") and run the following command:

Code:

bcdboot E:\Windows /d /addlast

Change the E: drive letter to whatever drive letter the Windows 10 partition has.

Solved Can't get 11 installed

New member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

New member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

New member

My Computer

New member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

New member

My Computer

Antidisestablishmentarianist

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

New member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

New member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

New member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

New member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

Similar threads