EFI Secure Boot question ahead of upgrade from Win10 to Win11.

[NewMC00]

I typed this up once and my WISP dropped out right before I clicked "Post."  Hopefully I won't leave anything out in my second attempt.

Question regarding risks associated with converting my primary drive from MBR to GPT ahead of upgrade from Win10 to Win11.  I've been running Win11 Insider dev builds on my laptop and am interested in upgrading my HP Elite 8300 SFF.  I don't foresee any major issues, but want to run my plan by the experts here.

Running factory mobo and processor (i5-3570), but with four SSD drives.  Three of these are attached internally via the RAID controller, one system drive and two storage drives.  The fourth is connected via USB 3.0 and is set up as an automated backup of the larger of two storage drives.

mbr2gpt.exe validation fails for my boot drive, but I believe AOMEI Partition Assistant will do the job to convert my boot drive to GPT without any data loss.  My plan is to do the conversion, then enter BIOS upon reboot to enable secure boot and set the boot order.  Once booted back into Win10 I would then proceed with the Win11 Pro upgrade.  In the back of my mind I can't help but wonder at the odds of performing the conversion, setting secure boot (EFI), setting boot order, and the machine failing to boot.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.  Has anyone done this with an Elite 8200/8300 and how did it turn out?  What other issues might I run into that I'm missing?  Thank you!

Related question: One of my storage drives is still utilizing MBR, do they all need to use GPT to be visible in Win11?

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

I have installed W11 on a HP 8200 Elite and HP 6200 Pro in EFI mode.

Neither PC supports secure boot.

Don't enable secure boot until after you make the MBR to GPT conversion.

I also tried the mbr2gpt.exe command on the 8200 Elite with negative results, and I didn't feel like paying for the Pro version of AOMEI to do the conversion.

Rather, I just clean installed W11.

Bear in mind that you can't just do an in-place upgrade using the W11 Installation Assistant or running the setup application from the W11 installer, unless you use some hacks, because your PC's processor and TPM 1.2 security device are not supported for W11.

You can bypass the W11 hardware requirements using two easy methods.  The first one is the easiest.

Prior to trying to convert the drives to GPT, I would make a system image of your current W10 installation prior to updating to W11, so you can easily reinstall W10 in the future.  I used the free Macrium Reflect software to do that, under the Backup at Home section. 

Along with the system image, make sure you create the bootable DVD or USB rescue drive you boot from to access the system image stored on your portable hard drive.

Macrium Software | Reflect Free Edition

Read and follow the instructions at the link below.

Windows 11 Upgrade Hack on Any Hardware | Dong Knows Tech

No registry changes needed.  No need to create installation media.  Just download the W11 ISO file, and the guy's zip file.

I used the first procedure last Saturday to do an in-place upgrade an old HP Elitebook 6930p notebook made in 2010 to W11, and I was able to keep my old Office 2010 Starter program that came with the notebook when it had W7 on it, along with all of my other programs, files and settings.

The notebook met none of the enhanced W11 hardware requirements.

That is the 9th unsupported W11 PC I have upgraded to W11, and not one of them have had any issues whatsoever.

They have all gotten all the Windows 11 updates released thus far.

I check those against a PC I have that is fully supported to run W11.

There is also this way you can upgrade to W11, bypassing the hardware checks...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02mgrA51974 

I'm not sure about not converting your storage drive to GPT. 

You may have to if you enable secure boot.

[NewMC00]

Thanks Paul, I was hoping you'd see this question.  I think I will use the hack you linked and hopefully will be able to successfully upgrade with that method.  I'd rather not mess with changing to GPT and secure boot if I can avoid it.

I did do the TPM check bypass registry hack, but the only message I've gotten from the W11 upgrade ISO is that secure boot needs to be enabled, no mention of processor not being suitable.

Based on your experience with the Elitebook I might try this method for some older machines as well.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

It works like a charm.

Microsoft drew the Intel processor cutoff line at the 8th gens.

On the Elitebook 6930p, it has a UEFI BIOS, but I left it in MBR so I didn't lose my programs.

I had no clue what UEFI meant back in '08.  😊