Upgrading from Win 11 Home to Win 11 Pro fails

I am trying to upgrade a Lenovo laptop running Windows 11 Home to Windows 11 Pro. Here are the system specs:

• Lenovo IdeaPad 5 15ITL05
• Intel i7-1165G7 @ 2.80 GHz
• 12GB RAM | 500GB SSD
• Windows 11 Home
• Purchased Dec 2022 as 'Renewed' from Amazon

It has worked flawlessly as received until the following problem was encountered: When trying to update to Version 22H2, that update always fails. There's no message concerning the failure, but (after rebooting) the update shows up again in Settings>Windows Update, prompting me to install it again. I've tried doing the update at least 4-5 times (spaced days apart), and always get the same result.

This, I felt, gave me the perfect 'excuse' to upgrade to Windows 11 Pro, so I bought the Microsoft upgrade 'kit' (USB stick in a box - shrink wrap unbroken until I opened it), but it fails, too. No code, but I do get this message: "Windows 11 installation has failed". I tried the two different installation methods as stated in the instructions: 1) Use File Manager to navigate to the USB stick, launch setup.exe, then follow the prompts - that failed. 2) Use Settings>System>Recovery> Advanced startup>Use a device (USB stick) - that failed, too.

I know diagnosing the exact problem would be extremely challenging on a discussion forum, but can anyone point me in the direction to go first? If this has been discussed in previous posts, a pointer to it/them would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

herbk98 said:

When trying to update to Version 22H2, that update always fails. There's no message concerning the failure, but (after rebooting) the update shows up again in Settings>Windows Update, prompting me to install it again. I've tried doing the update at least 4-5 times (spaced days apart), and always get the same result.

This, I felt, gave me the perfect 'excuse' to upgrade to Windows 11 Pro, so I bought the Microsoft upgrade 'kit' (USB stick in a box - shrink wrap unbroken until I opened it), but it fails, too.

Click to expand...

Welcome to Eleven Forum.

Your inability to upgrade to Pro and your inability to update from 21H2 to 22H2 are two quite separate issues.

There's no need to reinstall to upgrade from Home to Pro. You can upgrade you current 21H2 Home to 21H2 Pro simply by changing the installed key to the one you got with the Pro USB kit. This just enables the Pro features in your existing install, so shouldn't have any issues. See Option Two in this tutorial.


Your inability to update from 21H2 to 22H2 is a separate issue that could be tackled either before or after upgrading to Pro. I would first check for and repair possible system corruption. To do that open Terminal as and administrator and run the following commands.

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth SFC /ScanNow

The first command repairs the Component Store (WinSxS), the second repairs any corrupted system files, replacing them with a clean copy from the Component Store. Details are in these tutorials:

Hello, and welcome to the forum. @Bree beat me in posting. Along with his excellent suggestions, Let me add a few other things to try for a successful upgrade to 22h2. His suggestions were already in my list so I'm including my post as was originally written.

1A- Turn off any third party AV, including Malwarebytes if you have it.

1B-EDIT: per Bree's suggestion Added step here to keep things in their proper perspective.
Make sure you have no corrupt system files that is causing this problem. Open a command prompt as administrator and type sfc /scannow
Pay attention to the scan results to see if SFC found anything it could not repair. If it found corruption it could not fix followup with this command (note the spaces)
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
Restart computer

2. Make sure your date and time and time zone is correct.

3.. Run the troubleshooter. Settings>System>Troubleshoot>Other Troubleshooters>Windows Update troubleshooter>RUN

4.. Make sure .Net Framework 3.5 is installed
Search Windows Features. Select Turn Windows Features On and Off in the search results.
Put a check in the .Net Framework 3.5 box
Put a check in the .Net Framework 4.8 box
Click OK. Click Yes to install. RESTART computer

5.. Reset Windows update using Brink's tutorial Reset Windows Update in Windows 11 Tutorial

6.. CLEAN UP COMPONENT STORE USE OPTION 3
Analyze and Clean Up Component Store (WinSxS folder) in Windows 11 Tutorial

9. Try the upgrade again. Rather than upgrade through windows update, download the 22H2 iso and perform an in-place upgrade.
Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade Tutorial

10. After a successful upgrade, you can switch to PRO. Option 2 here Upgrade Windows 11 Home to Windows 11 Pro Tutorial

NOTE: 23H2 iso should be released in October. You can go ahead and upgrade to 22h2 so that all your troubleshooting will be behind you OR you can wait and upgrade from 21H2 directly to 23H2. The choice is yours.



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@glasskuter's suggestions are all good ones, especially turning off any 3rd-party AV. I would try my DISM/SFC repairs first, as a healthy system would be essential for any of the other suggestions to work.

Per @Bree suggestion I added the SFC/Dism repairs to my original post so all the suggestions could be kept together..

Folks, I appreciate all of your help, but I am still stuck in the mud, so to speak.
I tried all of the fixes I could from the many you suggested, and did correct some problems.
I found .Net Framework 3.5 was not installed, so I corrected that.
I also uncovered some other problems when stepping through the recommended lists of things to try. (Sorry - I did not think to write them down at the time, and now I can't remember specifics.)
However, after going through all of those steps, the bottom line is I still cannot install 22H2. It still fails with no feedback about the failure, but it shows up as being needed (again) a short while after the reboot.
Supposedly a complete reinstall of Windows 11 would correct any deficiency I have which causes the 22H2 upgrade to fail, so I downloaded a new version of the Windows 11 .ios file onto a flash drive, and went through the actions to install it. I get as far as the step where you select the drive/partition on which to install the OS, and that list comes up empty. But I do have Windows 11 Home installed on the C:\ drive because I use it every day!! However, the message at the bottom of the window states: "We couldn't find any drives. To get a storage driver, click Load driver." When I click on Load driver, the system can't find any. When I click on Browse, there are four choices presented. I tried them all and no drivers were found on any source.
I'm totally at a loss to understand what is happening here.
As for my skill level installing windows, I have done it since the '90s starting with 3.5. I don't get into it a lot, but probably at least once a year since then. I've never encountered a brick wall before, but I am at one now.

You do not list make/model or system specs but if you are unable to see the drive during a clean install, more than likely you are using Intel Rapid Storage Controller. That be the case, you have to insert this driver under "load driver' as per step 11 of clean install tutorial

Thank you again for your help. I updated my system specs on the site, but I'll repeat them here for ease of reading in one spot... Lenovo IdeaPad 5 15ITL05 / Intel i7-1165G7 / 12GB RAM / 500GB SSD NVMe UMIS (which I believe is a Lenovo device but there is no branding on it) / Windows 11.
I followed the path to Step 11 as you wrote, and once there I had three choices: 1) AMD Quick Start Guide- Chapter 5: Install AMD-RAID Drivers (PDF) [I'm not using an AMD processor], 2) Intel Support - Installing the Operating System onto a RAID Volume—F6 Install Method [I'm not using a RAID volume - to the best of my knowledge], and 3) If no drives can be found during Windows 11 or Windows 10 installation (Intel 11th Generation processors) [clicking on option #3 takes me to an HP support website and my laptop is Lenovo, not HP].
Once at the HP website they wanted to install an HP support tool and I stopped there because I'm not optimistic an HP support tool will be useful on a Lenovo. Maybe I'm wrong?
I appreciate your help, and I don't want to be a drag, but I sure could use some more help if you have the time and inclination.

The clean install tutorial states:
If RAID is enabled in UEFI/BIOS, Windows Setup may not see any drive(s) available to select to install on.
In this situation, you could either disable RAID in BIOS/UEFI OR select to "Add driver" to install the RAID driver from your OEM/motherboard manufacturer's chipset.

The referenced OEM articles are for guidance only as the procedure for manually installing a pre-boot storage controller driver is the same for all brands.

Another option you might consider is to enter recovery options and perform a 'reset and remove everything' or "reset and keep personal files'. This would reinstall a clean copy of the same version and build of Windows 11 you have now including drivers . You could immediately followup with mounting the 22H2 iso you downloaded and run setup.exe. If it upgrades successfully, then you could change from Home to Pro.

@herbk98 for you system specs you can get your graphics and display information from here. Just scrolll down to system specs.


As for your Sound Card, click on the start menu icon and type system information and open the app.



Expand Components ad select Sound Device

The driver you want can be found here:

Note these instructions from the readme file:
6.3 Pre-Installation of INTEL(R) RST driver using the "Load Driver" Method.

a. Extract driver files from SetupRST.exe:
- Open terminal in the directory with SetupRST.exe by right-clicking the directory
and selecting "Open in Terminal" or "Open PowerShell here"
- Enter the following command:
./SetupRST.exe -extractdrivers SetupRST_extracted

b. Copy all driver files from the SetupRST-extracted to a USB key media.

c. For Microsoft Windows OS*:
- During the operating system installation, after selecting the location to install
Windows, click 'Load Driver' to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver.

d. When prompted, insert the USB media and press Enter.

e. Follow the prompts and browse to the location of the installation files. Select the
appropriate ‘.inf’ file (64 or 32 bit). If a supported controller is detected there
will be no error message. Follow prompts to continue and complete the installation.

There are older versions available in a zip file also. They usually have "f6floppy" in their filename. Such as here: