Issue with Space When Upgrading

I am having an issue when attempting to upgrade my Windows 7 installation to Windows 10 using the USB created by the MediaCreationTool. It skips asking me what I want to save, so I assume it is going into the upgrade properly. It then asks me to check for updates, and whether I do or do not I then get to "Making Sure You're Ready To Install." This is when I get the error:

"Something happenedWe can't tell if your PC has enough space to continue installing Windows 10. Try restarting Setup."

There's 153GB of free space on this partition, so this should not be an issue. I have two 1TB HDDs. The main one (Disk 0) has my Windows 7 installation, which I am running this from, and a small Ubuntu partition. The second (Disk 1) only contains my Windows 7 backups, including a system image. I'm including a picture of the setup. Disk 2 is the USB I am attempting to upgrade from.

When I attempt to upgrade via Winows Update, I get another issue. I don't want to waste the data on redownloading it every time, so I'd prefer to get it to work with the USB I've already downloaded.

My guess is that it is probably the 100mb system reserved partition. I would install MiniTool Partition Wizard - shrink the C: drive partition by 350mb (megabytes, not gigabytes!) putting the free space in front of it, then expand the 100mb system reserved partition into the free space making it 450mb total in size.

Hi Navy,

I tried using that program to change the partitions, and it rendered the OS unbootable. This was with D: at 450 MB, taken from the front of C:. I got it back by making a recovery USB using the Windows 7 image, which ended up working.

Was there something incorrect I did there? The System Reserved section is to the left, so it seems when I extend it to the right it takes over the space that the boot sector is in in the C: drive, at least to my understanding. I was using the program you said, which I assumed would take care of this, but apparently not.

It may be as simple as defragging the HD. Win 10 upgrade doesn't like fragmented HDs.

Actually, looking at your disk partitions a second time, things are really screwed up on your system. You have a system reserved partition on Disk 0 - but C: drive partition is marked as active. Then you also have a system reserved partition on Disk 1 which is also marked as active. The first question is which hard drive does the computer actually boot from and why do you have a system reserved partition on Disk 0 that is not marked as active with the C: drive marked as active instead?

Marked as active is usually reserved for the partition that the computer boots from - which is normally a System Reserved partition on the same physical disk as the operating system.

Posting this from Windows 10!

So after resizing that partition which corrupted my booting, I got it fixed but still had the extra space in the Reserved section. I gave this to the System Reserved Partition using the normal Disk Management in Windows. I then used "diskpart" to switch around which partitions were active, so once I was done only the System Reserved partition on my main, not backup, disk was active. From there it worked perfectly. This is an image of my partition setup just before running it.

Thanks to everyone for the help!

EJBQuinn said:

Posting this from Windows 10!

So after resizing that partition which corrupted my booting, I got it fixed but still had the extra space in the Reserved section. I gave this to the System Reserved Partition using the normal Disk Management in Windows. I then used "diskpart" to switch around which partitions were active, so once I was done only the System Reserved partition on my main, not backup, disk was active. From there it worked perfectly. This is an image of my partition setup just before running it.

Thanks to everyone for the help!

Glad you got it working!

cereberus said:

Also, recommend you remove efi partition from D drive. Not really worth moving main partition though just to reclaim this space.

EJBQuinn. you certainly do not need the system reserved partition on Disk 1 (F: drive). You can delete it and expand the G: drive partition into the empty space to make the disk 1 big partition.

Also, I would remove the drive letters from both system reserved partitions - they don't need drive letters and removing the drive letters will give you less clutter in your Windows File Explorer and also keep some programs from messing in those partitions that should not be routinely messed with.