Can't get UEFI drive to boot - Chapter 2

@Megahertz -
- I assume you recommend Macrium for cloning.
- Before the cloning do I wipe the UEFI disk clean ? If so, use Macrium for that too? DISKPART works nicely for that.
- When I "boot from the Win 10 installation drive", do you mean the USB stick I created with Media Creation Tool?

I want to be sure if I'm following your directions that I do it to the letter.

thornev said:

@Megahertz -
- I assume you recommend Macrium for cloning.
Yes. Expand C: partition and you can shrink de System partition to 100MB and enlarge Recovery partition to 800MB

- Before the cloning do I wipe the UEFI disk clean ? If so, use Macrium for that too? DISKPART works nicely for that.
To clean the drive you can use diskpart or Minitoll.
- When I "boot from the Win 10 installation drive", do you mean the USB stick I created with Media Creation Tool?
Yes. Don't forget to detach ALL the other drives so mbr2gpt knows witch one to convert

I want to be sure if I'm following your directions that I do it to the letter.

Disk Manager image should be like post #21
- EFI partition - Fat32 ~100MB
- MR Reserved - RAW - 16M
- C: partition - NTFS
- Recovery partition - NTFS ~800MB
- Your Data partition - NTFS

Remember: Your hands must be much slower than your hands. Think twice, act once.

@Megahertz - Sanity check to ensure I'm understanding your directions correctly...

1. Enable CSM in BIOS (done).
2. Boot legacy disk.
3. Wipe the new EFI disk clean (diskpart or Macrium).
3. Using Macrium clone the partitions on the legacy disk.

Question - There are 2 partitions (see post #21) about the same size at the end of the legacy disk. Disk Management claims one of them is the Recovery disk. I assume clone only that partition and not the other similarly-sized partition.

4. Expand the cloned Windows partition to fill all of that partition space.
5. Power off and detach all disks except the legacy and EFI disks.
6. Boot the USB stick which was created by Media Creation Tool.
7. Get to a command window (press shift-F12 somewhere during the boot process).
8. Run mbr2gpt /validate and then, if validate succeeds, mbr2gbt /convert.
9. Restart into BIOS and disable CSM.
10. Boot the EFI disk to verify it boots successfully.
11. Power off and attach all other drives.
12. Restart and boot the EFI drive to verify everything works correctly.

If it was me, I would run "reagentc -disable" before cloning and not mess with the recovery partitions at all. In about 15 minutes I will have an example of a fresh, clean MBR/legacy BIOS install converted to GPT using mbr2gpt to show you.

Starting over is good, because tpm 2.0 is not supported in legacy or csm mode. Either it will not be supported or it will not be 100% effective for security.

"Note

TPM 2.0 is not supported in Legacy and CSM Modes of the BIOS. Devices with TPM 2.0 must have their BIOS mode configured as Native UEFI only. The Legacy and Compatibility Support Module (CSM) options must be disabled. For added security Enable the Secure Boot feature. (...) "

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ecommendations

This is a brand new clean install on a completely blank disk:



Then I ran mbr2gpt:

Code:

C:\Windows\system32>mbr2gpt /convert /disk:0 /allowfullos

MBR2GPT will now attempt to convert disk 0.
If conversion is successful the disk can only be booted in GPT mode.
These changes cannot be undone!

MBR2GPT: Attempting to convert disk 0
MBR2GPT: Retrieving layout of disk
MBR2GPT: Validating layout, disk sector size is: 512 bytes
MBR2GPT: Trying to shrink the OS partition
MBR2GPT: Creating the EFI system partition
MBR2GPT: Installing the new boot files
MBR2GPT: Performing the layout conversion
MBR2GPT: Migrating default boot entry
MBR2GPT: Adding recovery boot entry
MBR2GPT: Fixing drive letter mapping
MBR2GPT: Conversion completed successfully
Call WinReReapir to repair WinRE
MBR2GPT: Failed to update ReAgent.xml, please try to  manually disable and enable WinRE.
MBR2GPT: Before the new system can boot properly you need to switch the firmware to boot to UEFI mode!

C:\Windows\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.964

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DESKTOP-UPJF5DO

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list part

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary             50 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    Primary            126 GB    51 MB
  Partition 4    System             100 MB   126 GB
  Partition 3    Recovery           509 MB   126 GB

DISKPART>

This is the resulting GPT disk:

@NavyLCDR - You had an error message from mbr2gbt. No response needed to make corrections?

thornev said:

@NavyLCDR - You had an error message from mbr2gbt. No response needed to make corrections?

Nope.

NavyLCDR said:

If it was me, I would run "reagentc -disable" before cloning and not mess with the recovery partitions at all. In about 15 minutes I will have an example of a fresh, clean MBR/legacy BIOS install converted to GPT using mbr2gpt to show you.

I thought the same thing.

I always suggest to run mbr2gpt on a winpe. Under windows many things can prevent the conversion (like antivirus)

@NavyLCDR - How did you get the partitions populated on the clean disk in post 96?

You said don't mess with Recovery partitions, but how did you get the one in your illustration?