Something I just thought about - can an antivirus cause upgrade failure? I forgot to turn everything off.
You can assign a drive letter to that highlighted partition, and look for what is in it. Delete at your own risk; you won’t gain much in any event.
I wouldn't simply delete it. Do what the Captain said first, look what is on it. Then, there's a potential problem that might play a role in your past issues - it is still marked as System partition (MBR OS, not the EFI one). That's odd, it shouldn't, you need only the EFI one. It's marked as Active, and you booted from it. Obviously, it works.
I wonder if I can add drive letters to both partitions and copy the contents of the new one into the old one and delete the new one. That old one is the only partition labeled "system"
I'd be curious to see what's in that old one, marked "system". To see what's in there, you will need to set file explorer to show system files after you assign a drive letter. If it contains a bootmgr file, and boot folder, it is probably an mbr boot partition, left over from an mbr2gpt conversion, and is useless at this point. It could also indicate the reason you were having boot failure to start with, until you managed to create the new EFI boot folder. You can also use diskpart to assign drive letters.
ok, i'll go check that out and post it's contents. Meanwhile I ran testdisk and it looks like EFI is a mess! - although I don't know how to read this info. edit - it will take a while as I've got testdisk running because I accidently deleted a drive. " Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 2 (FAT) != 255 (HD) Warning: number of sector460330312 460333191es 18 (2880 [EFI System Partition] [EFISECTOR] EFI System Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 2 (FAT) != 255 (HD) Warning: number of sector460333192 460336071es 18 (2880 [EFI System Partition] [EFISECTOR] EFI System Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 2 (FAT) != 255 (HD) Warning: number of sector471735508 471738387es 18 (2880 [EFI System Partition] [EFISECTOR] EFI System Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (NTFS) != 255 (HD) Warning: number of sector471737519 471743692es 2 (N6174 != 63 (HD) MS Data Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (NTFS) != 255 (HD) Warning: number of sector471743692 471749865es 2 (N6174 [Boot](HD) MS Data Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 2 (FAT) != 255 (HD) Warning: number of sector471749872 471752751es 18 (2880 [EFI System Partition] [EFISECTOR] EFI System Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 2 (FAT) != 255 (HD) Warning: number of sector473823828 473826707es 18 (2880 [EFI System Partition] [EFISECTOR] EFI System
The Recovery partition usually has partition ID 0x27 (Hidden NTFS). You would have to change it to 0x07 (NTFS) to enable the menus (and back after you're done). However, the good news is that the Recovery partition doesn't need to be inspected at all, we already know that WinRE is on it. We are interested only in the one that has Status "System".
You guys aren't going to believe this. Windows 11 is now installing saving my programs and files. I was going to RE but just decided to see the usual no offer to save anything. I was wrong. It's installing and saving right now. I'll get back to the System file contents after this.
I used diskpart to finally get Drive C to stick and not revert to D after closing. I think I may have deleted or it got corrupt as I had to create a new boot file. At that point it wasn't booting. I'm not sure about a mbr-gpt conversion. GPT was the system from the start
This is just a guess but initially I would get an error that said there wasn't enough space to install. That started to point to the boot file partition so I increased the size as much as was allowed and it still wasn't enough. I'm wondering if the original boot files were corrupt or nothing more could be written to it so I couldn't upgrade. Perhaps the new boot file, even though it's smaller in size, enabled the upgrade to install keeping everything. I'm still waiting for updates to finish. It took a long time to upgrade. I will post the contents of the old boot files as soon as I can get to diskpart.
Well, what can I say? I'm not going to keep it as it runs slow. Is there a way to speed up its functions? I took a picture of my desktop because it is taking so long to give me a Save As dialog I'm going to get that boot file info now
At this point, you've been at it for about 10 days now. In this amount of time it would've probably made more sense to just clean install windows 11, see how it performs fresh and, if you don't like it, just clean install windows 10 and install all your apps again. When you're done setting up everything you want, make a backup image of your system and restore it whenever needed. It's no secret windows 11 is a sluggish mess.
That's the first time I've heard that. The older laptop I have run okay with 11 but this one is so slow and when I boot it from the install disk, it just goes to my desktop like nothing . I wonder why the older laptop runs well in comparison I really dislike installing needed programs and configuring my laptop. That can take a week as well.
You're kidding... right? Linux will run even faster than Windows 10, and your battery will last longer, often a lot longer... Heck Linux will even run a lot of native Windows binaries faster than Windows under compatibility layers like Wine and Proton, with Bottles, Lutris and Heroic to make it all very easy as well...
Windows 11 has been like that since the very beginning, generally due to how it's put together. A lot of new code running on top of old code. It's gotten so bad that microsoft "had to come up with" the K2 initiative to improve the garbage they created... or rather their AI created.
I wasn't keeping up with the news. When my laptop told me there will be no more updates, I started searching for an upgrade but have found nothing saying it was a bloated mess and ran slow. From the desktop home page nothing I click navigates. Only reload and other system icons work and the close button. The"quick access" page icons don't respond. On the left pane navigation only Home and Gallery work. I can't even get to the usb drives. When I boot into the usb install, it boots back into the normal windows install ignoring what I told it to boot. Is there a way to revert back this install?
My experience with Linux was it required more effort - the install, dependencies, and other tasks I wasn't used to doing turned me off. I tried Mint, I think it was called, and some other well known versions. My battery died long ago. It swelled up inside my laptop destroying the use or function of the forward arrow key. I run the laptop off the wall. I continue to use it because it was higher end at the time with touchscreen and backlit keyboard.