Installation and Upgrade Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade

WildWilly · Dec 4, 2023

Here's what happened. I started trying to follow Brink's tutorial by booting from my install media & trying to do a repair install from that. I ended up in an endless loop where it sent me from here to there then over there then back here in a loop. In frustration, I tried to follow the instructions for doing a Repair Install from the Settings dialog. I thought I was doing a Repair Install. I read the comment about being a canary & its significance didn't really sink in. It's not that I didn't see it & didn't read it. I didn't properly grasp its significance. So I ended up doing 3 Resets but I was calling them Repair Installs because I'm not a canary, just a bird brain.

Just now, after your second prodding, which is kind of quick for me since I'm so smart you usually have to tell me about 5 times before I understand something, I went back to the tutorial & read the part about installing from an ISO again. I got my W11 ISO while I was still on W7. I hadn't completed the build of this new PC yet. All I had was W7. So I was trying to follow Brink's tutorial on how to create W11 install media. I posted under that tutorial at the time. Here's a short version of what I said over there. MCT apparently doesn't function correctly on W7. Rufus -- the alleged backlevel version that is supposed to work on W7 -- didn't work for me. So I downloaded an ISO from Microsoft. When it came to the step for mounting the ISO, I hit the problem that mounting an ISO is not a concept that W7 understands. Fortunately, PeaZip (a lovely bit of freeware) is perfectly capable of unzipping an ISO. Apparently, an ISO is basically just a zip archive. This was something I learned 3 years ago when I did my Repair Install on W7. I unzipped a W7 ISO with PeaZip & launched the W7 Repair Install from one of my HDDs. Skip forward to a few minutes ago. I still have the ISO from which I created my W11 bootable USB SSD that allowed me to install this W11 from which I am posting this here now. I simply removed all my disk drives from the W7 system & attached them to the W11 system. So all I had to do was launch the Repair Install from the unzipped W11 ISO I still have on one of my HDDs. It took maybe 15 minutes & here I am. I have gone into Settings -> Apps -> Default Apps -> Choose defaults by file type. I have set a handful of file associations in there. I think my Repair Install actually worked. It was a Repair Install this time. Miracle of miracles. I finally followed the instuctions properly. And now I will go away & quit littering this thread with my inane comments.

johnlgalt · Dec 4, 2023

@Brink - when performing an in-place upgrade (for repair purposes), is Hyper-V reset (and are all VMs lost)?

Brink · Dec 5, 2023

johnlgalt said:
@Brink - when performing an in-place upgrade (for repair purposes), is Hyper-V reset (and are all VMs lost)?

No. They remain the same.

johnlgalt · Dec 5, 2023

Nice. Just verified that after performing an in-place upgrade for repair from 22631.2715 (installed) to 22631.2792.

Worked like a champ!

Brink · Dec 5, 2023

johnlgalt said:
Nice. Just verified that after performing an in-place upgrade for repair from 22631.2715 (installed) to 22631.2792.

Worked like a champ!

fixer · Dec 5, 2023

I wanted to get my recovery partition back having previously removed it and rearranging the remaining partitions. Had real doubts a repair install would sort it but they were unfounded. Worked like a charm!

Brink · Dec 5, 2023

fixer said:
I wanted to get my recovery partition back having previously removed it and rearranging the remaining partitions. Had real doubts a repair install would sort it but they were unfounded. Worked like a charm!

Steve C · Dec 6, 2023

I'm do a repair install at the moment. I selected the include updates option and the screen "making sure you're ready to install" has been showing for over an hour, initially at 20 Mbps download speed and now in bursts of 20kbps. Has something gone wrong and I'm better off deselecting the install with updates option?

Brink · Dec 6, 2023

Steve C said:
I'm do a repair install at the moment. I selected the include updates option and the screen "making sure you're ready to install" has been showing for over an hour, initially at 20 Mbps download speed and now in bursts of 20kbps. Has something gone wrong and I'm better off deselecting the install with updates option?

Hello Steve,

It would always be best to select Not right now for "Get updates, drivers and optional features" when doing a repair install. It only adds unnecessary overhead that can be done later when finished via Windows Update.

Steve C · Dec 6, 2023

Brink said:
Hello Steve,

It would always be best to select Not right now for "Get updates, drivers and optional features" when doing a repair install. It only adds unnecessary overhead that can be done later when finished via Windows Update.

I stopped the install and restarted without the optional updates after which it was quick. Only 2 updates were needed anyway. Should have followed the instructions!

Peterwm · Dec 18, 2023

@Brink I have done the multiple drive installation as described by Kari
Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10
the problem is that when I try to do an in-place repair, keeping all installed apps and files, I get the following message:
"To reset this PC and keep your files, the Users, Program Files and Windows directories need to
be on the same drive. You can choose to reset this PC and remove everything instead, but
you should back up your personal files first."
Is there a way to do the repair without doing a complete reinstall?

Brink · Dec 18, 2023

Peterwm said:
@Brink I have done the multiple drive installation as described by Kari
Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10
the problem is that when I try to do an in-place repair, keeping all installed apps and files, I get the following message:
"To reset this PC and keep your files, the Users, Program Files and Windows directories need to
be on the same drive. You can choose to reset this PC and remove everything instead, but
you should back up your personal files first."
Is there a way to do the repair without doing a complete reinstall?

Hello Peter, and welcome.

Only by temporarily moving those system folders back to "C", then move them back after the repair install has finished.

POLYSIUS · Dec 18, 2023

If you transfer only the files in C:\Users\<name> that have the path-tab like docs, pics, etc. the Inplacement runs without any problem. Appdata is dangerous and the NTUSER.DAT is extremely dangerous.

LesFerch · Mar 10, 2024

@Brink A few times I've had users come back to me to say that they don't have the "Recovery" option. Obviously, they did not read the line that says "This option is only available starting with Windows 11 build 25905 (Canary), build 23601 (Dev), and build 22635.2915 (Beta)." However, many users don't have the technical knowledge to digest that sentence (or they just don't read carefully), so they assume that Option 1 must be the most common option since it's at the top.

I was wondering if maybe the options should be switched around until the Recovery option becomes standard (and proven to work reliably)?

Brink · Mar 10, 2024

LesFerch said:
@Brink A few times I've had users come back to me to say that they don't have the "Recovery" option. Obviously, they did not read the line that says "This option is only available starting with Windows 11 build 25905 (Canary), build 23601 (Dev), and build 22635.2915 (Beta)." However, many users don't have the technical knowledge to digest that sentence (or they just don't read carefully), so they assume that Option 1 must be the most common option since it's at the top.

I was wondering if maybe the options should be switched around until the Recovery option becomes standard (and proven to work reliably)?

Hello mate,

I've added a warning at the top of option one to help make that more clear and to use option two instead.

steveg · Mar 10, 2024

Did the second option about a month ago and everything went perfectly. Didn't lose a thing, desktop and shortcuts all there, no hiccups since.

PS: I did it because 10 went wonky on me and couldn't even get into restore options along with some other issues so decided to take the plunge. Glad I finally went to 11, very happy with it so far.

alpha45 · Mar 21, 2024

I did the update starting from option 2, but in the end it looked like this:

I did the update starting from option 2, but in the end it looked like this:I downloaded the .ISO 23H2 version from this page: https://www.microsoft.com/it-it/software-download/windows11.iso and used rufus to create pendrive with the option to bypass TPM/Secure Boot with mode Windows 11 selected. My s.o.'s version is: 23H2 22631.3155
What can be the cause?
Thank you

Bree · Mar 21, 2024

alpha45 said:
...used rufus to create pendrive with the option to bypass TPM/Secure Boot with mode Windows 11 selected.

LesFerch said:
An install from a USB drive, whether it's using Rufus or Microsoft's tool, is what you would do for clean install of Windows.

To do a Repair Install, you just open the downloaded ISO in Windows and run Setup.

alpa45's specs say the processor is an unsupported Intel Core 2 Duo E8600. Just mounting the ISO and running Setup from there would not work on this unsupported machine. Rufus was used to create a USB that would bypass the checks. You can do an in-place upgrade from a USB as easily as you can from an ISO, and made with Rufus this one would not check the system.

hdmi · Mar 21, 2024

alpha45 said:
I did the update starting from option 2, but in the end it looked like this:

View attachment 91040
I did the update starting from option 2, but in the end it looked like this:I downloaded the .ISO 23H2 version from this page: https://www.microsoft.com/it-it/software-download/windows11.iso and used rufus to create pendrive with the option to bypass TPM/Secure Boot with mode Windows 11 selected. My s.o.'s version is: 23H2 22631.3155
What can be the cause?
Thank you

Try it with Ventoy instead of with Rufus. Ventoy also has the ability to bypass the hardware checks and online account requirement, and, in Ventoy, that ability is enabled by default. Ventoy 1.0.86: bypass Windows 11 hardware and online account requirement enabled by default - gHacks Tech News

EDIT: My apologies, with Ventoy it only bypasses the checks if doing a clean install (i.e., after booting from the Ventoy-formatted USB stick) of course. One possible explanation why the attempt to repair Windows with an in-place upgrade has failed could be because you didn't unplug all USB devices (excepting only the USB keyboard and/or USB mouse, if any) from the computer before the automatic reboot occurred during the attempted repair. This also means that the repair could potentially fail if the USB stick hasn't been unplugged before this reboot occurs. So, if that happens to be your case, a possible workaround would be to create an ISO image from the USB stick that you already prepared with Rufus, and make sure that this ISO file is stored onto an internal drive where it can still continue to be accessed by Windows after the ISO file is mounted [and the USB stick is unplugged].

LesFerch · Mar 21, 2024

Bree said:
alpa45's specs say the processor is an unsupported Intel Core 2 Duo E8600. Just mounting the ISO and running Setup from there would not work on this unsupported machine. Rufus was used to create a USB that would bypass the checks. You can do an in-place upgrade from a USB as easily as you can from an ISO, and made with Rufus this one would not check the system.