Solved Laptop reverts back to win10

hi folks, strange situation.
bought laptop with win11 preinstalled. inserted old ssd with win10 but it saw win11 and everything worked fine until today when it insisted on starting in safe mode. i went to msconfig, unticked safe mode, restarted and there she went back to win10. i went to msconfig again to see if win11 is listed as boot os but only win10 showed..... please assist!
regards
gabriel

You can do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything.

FreeBooter said:

You can do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything.

Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade

This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 11 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything. If you need to repair or create a new recovery partition or having problems with the Windows 11 operating system on your PC, and the usual solutions will not fix it...

www.elevenforum.com

Click to expand...

Something glitched caused windows auto repair to roll back. There is no guarantee a repair upgrade (in this case not a repair upgrade actually a re-upgrade) is going to change anything until OP gets to root cause of the issue.

gabrielsmit said:

bought laptop with win11 preinstalled. inserted old ssd with win10 but it saw win11 and everything worked fine

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Are you saying you inserted the Windows 10 drive as a secondary drive or are you saying you replaced the windows 11 drive with the windows 10 one.
Knowing your system specs would be helpful.

tx @glasskuter , as in image the original eMMC boxed yellow is the drive with win 11, i attached the other one boxed blue which has as os win10. initially i thought i would have to address the problem of os disparity but upon booting into win11 and setting everything up it worked in win11 with access to the new ssd, ignoring the win10 os.... until today. initially it gave me access to the win10 and apart from faulty display layout [which made me look at the os] seemed to work ok, in the meantime it will only boot into the repair setup, no ms welcome anymore.

sorry bad english...
3 condition:

check your windows boot manager, and see the path.
check disk management, is your other ssd showing up ?if so ... then you should manage the rule about BOOT sequence
I think this is happen when you update w10

===
but if you mean to replace .... SSD01 = w11 with SSD02 = w10 ...
when you turn back ssd02 the w11... it go to safemode ?

====
but if you want to remove w11
copy OS or split the partition

install w10 on new partition
after finish...
delete the w11 partition and move the w10 partition to the front (after reserved partition) <--- optional, since ssd doesnt care where your file placement

It seems Acer offers no maintenance manual for the laptop and no screenshots of its UEFI bios pages so you will have to navigate within the bios until you find boot options. As was suggested enter the bios and make sure your m.2 drive is set as first boot device. If it is your intention to only use the Win10 ssd as a storage drive, make sure the ssd is not a boot option. Be sure and save any changes. If it is your intention to dual boot both OSes report back.

If your boot options are correct in UEFI, your UEFI bootloader may have gotten corrupted. You can attempt to repair it. However, depending on your level of understanding and expertise, you may feel more secure to remove the Win10 drive and restore your Win11 system to OOBE from the factory recovery partition.

this has been updated to include Windows 11 How to Repair EFI/GPT Bootloader on Windows 10 or 11? | Windows OS Hub

tx @glasskuter - progress report:
regards

gabrielsmit said:

laptop will not enter repair mode - except for dos which shows x: drive - when ssd in no1 above is unplugged

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With only the original windows 11 m.2 drive installed, does the uefi bios recognize the presence of the drive? Bios are different but all the recognized drives are usually listed under system configuration or system information. If the system recognizes that the m.2 is present, under boot options, what is the first boot device listed?

If the uefi bios does NOT see the m.2, then there's something wrong with the m.2 drive. This would account for why, with both drives installed it ended up booting to 10 if the 10 ssd drive was listed in boot options.
If the bios does not see the physical presence of the m.2 there's no sense trying the suggestions I gave you. You will need to contact Acer if the laptop is under warranty or purchase a new m.2 if it's not unless you want to clean install 11 on the ssd. (This brings up a point that is confusing me, though. If the bios does not recognize the presence of the m.2 I can't for the life of me figure out how you made a Windows 11 image with Macrium. Or was the image you made of Windows 10?)

I am tagging a few of our hardware experts. Maybe one of them can see what I may be missing or misunderstanding. @zbook @NavyLCDR @Ghot @Dru2 or anyone else who can see this any differently with the info we have been given.

gabrielsmit said:

tx @glasskuter - progress report:

1st i took out ssd with win10 - the original c: , blue box in img - and made full macrium backup​

​

4th laptop will not enter repair mode - except for dos which shows x: drive - when ssd in no1 above is unplugged​

Click to expand...

To be clear, you did remove the SSD (blue drive)? Essentially leaving the machine as it came?

Also, to be frank I think you're trying too many things you're not clear about. Also how old is this PC? Still under warranty?

For me, I'd just remove the SSD you installed and reset the PC per the manufacturer's instructions. Go from there.

These may be some viable options:

a) Select the desired disk drive > clean install Windows 10 > restore only the C: partition > perform an in place upgrade to Windows 11

b) Backup up files > clean install Windows 11 on the desired disk drive > reinstall drivers and applications > restore files

c) Perform a custom install to have Windows backup files to Windows.old > clean install Windows 11 > reinstall drivers and applications > restore files from Windows.old

thanks for all assisting and others reading and also wondering - i solved the problem maybe not in the 'best ms practices' way but nevertheless the outcome is working very well.
the acer asprire 5 laptop stubbornly refused to allow the win11 usb to load a fresh copy of the os, not even with the boot order set to boot from the usb. all bios settings [uefi] were set correctly - i have done this a couple of times...
somehow eventually it would 'see' the startup but well into the setup of win11 it would restart and show me the by then dreaded green lettered acer startup screen. then i somehow accessed the part where win install asked on which partition/volume the install should take place.
i then did a format on the largest active primary volume, still the acer would refuse to finish the win11 install.
eventually i used the install 'partition manager' to format ALL available partitions and voila, the install of win11 went ahead and i later did a partitioning of the emmc/ssd hd with easus partition manager.
thereafter i organized all data files from the old [in blue box in image on previous post] ssd and moved them to the now brand new win11 emmc [yellow box] with robocopy [very snappy procedure]. the new win11 install somehow 'saw' the old win11 and activation was not necessary.
the key of the old win10 copy on the now defunct ssd [blue box] i will use in a future installation.
obviously i had to do some re-installs of third party programs on the laptop [my wife's]. in the end, after hours of seemingly chaotic trial and error, hours of googling, unknown reserves of what seems to have been common sense [20/20 hindesight?], lost sleep etc,SUCCESS
thanks again for reading this 'rambling'
regards
gabriel