Can install Windows 10 due to insuffient space on a 500GB partition

Megahertz said:

You didn't detach the other drives as instructed. You're playing with partitions and a small mistake can erase a drive.
Detach any other drives (SATA or Power cable) from the MB.
...

Hi again Megahertz,

I know I am taking a chance, but I have a laptop and I just don't want to open it up in order to detach the addition drives. I've done a dual boot on this machine prior. I just don't know why I am getting these errors at every attempt to install.

Kind regards,

tecknot

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Megahertz said:

Sorry,
Boot from a Win 10 installation drive and at the Windows Setup screen, press Shift+F10 simultaneously to open a command line prompt and type:...

Okay I'm going to try but I don't think I can get to the Setup screen of the installation process.

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Megahertz said:

Sorry,
Boot from a Win 10 installation drive and at the Windows Setup screen, press Shift+F10 simultaneously to open a command line prompt and type:

diskpart
list vol (take note of the Win 11 partition letter. It may not be C:)
list disk (it will list all drives. Identify the main drive number)
select disk n (replace n by the main drive number obtained with list disk)
select part 1
del part override
create part EFI size=100
format fs=FAT32 quick
assign letter=W
create part MSR size=15
exit (to exit diskpart)

bcdboot X:\Windows /s W: /f UEFI (replace X with the Win 11 partition letter found above)
...

[Not another problem!]
Okay, I got to the Setup screen and got into Diskpart and did all those things, however, looking at the photo below you will see that the Windows 11 partition does not have a letter. there is no volume letter for the Windows 11 partition. A photo I tried to attached just throws up an error on the forum.

Kind regards,

tecknot

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Hi Megahertz,

It occurred to me, why not just assign a letter to the Windows 11 partition and it worked. I rebooted after successfully creating the boot partition (if I got that right). So, now I am in the installation phase.

Kind regards,

tecknot

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Oh yeah! Now I am in the OOBE. You did it, Megahertz. You got me in.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Kind regards,

tecknot

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I am excited and proud to post this last post in this thread as a roaring success thanks to Megahertz and a little help from Pentagon.

Kind regards to everyone,

tecknot

I saw on your My Computer that you listed as a laptop but, as I never saw a laptop with 3 drives I assumed it was a desktop.
Glad you did it.

Can you please post a Disk Manager image of your drives?

Pentagon said:

@tecknot

The above commands ruin your structure!
Do it like this:
diskpart
list disk (it will list all drives. Identify the main drive number)
select disk n (replace n by the main drive number obtained with list disk)
select part 1
format fs=FAT32 quick
assign letter=W
exit

bcdboot C:\Windows /s W: /f UEFI

Congratulation! I told you that it ruins your Partition structure.
And it did it! There was not a single reason to delete partition 1! That is the result!

Well done, Mr. Megahertz! Your words: "I know what I'm doing."

Pentagon said:

Well done, Mr. Megahertz! Your words: "I know what I'm doing."

Thank you @Pentagon.
The intention was to delete partition 1 as it was preventing win 10 to install and then recreate a new EFI and MSR on the unalloacated space at the beginning of the drive.
It did create a new EFI partition on the unallocated space probably when Win 10 was installed and not by the WinPE commands that should create at the beginning of the drive.

@tecknot, can you boot into Win 11? If you don't, it's an easy fix.

Lets find out if it created a MSR partition
Could you please run the following commands as administrator (under win 10 or 11) and post it here.
Diskpart
sel disk 1
list part
exit

@tecknot, you can't trust on Windows Disk Manager. It doesn't show MSR partition and the EFI partition it says it is 100% free when its not.
A disk manager you can trust is MiniTool partition manager