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#20
@gdc88, were you able to convert to UEFI afterwards?
I looked at the logs. Initially, the extended partition was not recognized (?). I converted the two data partitions to primaries, and then the four partitions were recognized, but the problem you mention appeared:
ValidateLayout: Too many MBR partitions found, no room to create EFI system partition.
I suppose this is the normal situation, the procedure should handle these cases automatically. Otherwise it becomes a cumbersome trial-and error process, which involves manual manipulation of the partitions. Not good.
Navy is on the right track. I didn't suggest that because I am not so familiar with reagent and couldn't walk you through it. But there's a whole slew of problems like this on eightforums, when people had used EASEUS to modify partitions and then couldn't access the recovery partition.
I would let Navy get your partitions in order with reagent.
It sounds like this little utility is not quite up to prime time release. I would suggest that people try it once, and if it throws an error just use the manual method of converting if they still want to.
Some Tests Performed to understand how this works.
Test 1 - MBR has 4 primary Partitions
As expected, it failed to work. It is not clever enough to remove old SRP
Test 2 - MBR has 3 primary Partitions but no unallocated space
This validated fine - did not convert it.
Test 3 - MBR had 4 Primary Partitions but SRP was deleted first
This worked fine!
Note how it shrank OS rather than look for unallocated space.
Summary:
1) You cannot use mbr2gpt if 4 MBR partitions to start with - from log you can see it creates EFI first then does conversion to GPT.
(I do not see why it does not do conversion first then create EFI which would get round 4 MBR partition limit)
2) You can delete SRP first to reduce MBR partitions to 3.
Tutorial Recommendation
Add sentence saying if drive already had 4 primary partitions, you need to delete the System Reserved Partition first
Caveat: Not all MBR OS disks have an SRP for historical compatibility. Here it would be necessary to delete another primary partition eg a recovery partition
Note: I do not know how logical partitions would work. More tests needed.
Here's the problem, though....average Joe user deletes the System Reserved Partition and then the conversion to GPT and UEFI booting fails for another reason. Now what? Joe user is left with a computer that won't boot until one partition on that drive is made bootable again. My humble opinion is that it is dangerous for average Joe user to delete the System Reserved Partition their computer is booting from - at least without a major warning that deleting the partition will result in a failure to boot until either the conversion utility successfully creates an EFI System Partition or if it it fails another partition is made bootable.