Quote Originally Posted by MAFoElffen View Post
Upgrade from Win 10 to Win 11 first? Yes.

Remember to do good backups, between the different stages of that journey. Have a good fallback point.

Back a few months ago there was a Win 10 upgrade error, where it you installed Win 10 from a build number some time ago... A recent update tried to rewrite the Windows Recovery partition and filled it up, causing an update crash loop. The size of it needs to be 550MB or larger. Microsoft, even today, says it can't fix this error, or get around it though it's update system. That it can only be corrected by manual intervention. The fix is to resize the WIN OS partition from the start of it (which can be done from Win RE, but not the GUI Storage management toolset), delete the old Windows Recovery partition, recreate and format it... Then reapply the update, for it to recreate/rewrite it.

You would have thought they they would add a hot-patch to first check the minimum size of the Win Recovery partition, before it writing to it, to ensure it doesn't do that... But that makes too much sense right?

So yes, if you are keeping Windows, and installing Ubuntu alongside of Windows... Get the Windows issues straightened out first. That way, there is less of a risk of Windows ignoring whatever else is there on the machine, before it tries applying some crazy updates and fixes to it's own problems. It has an ego, and could care less what else is there that is not Windows. I do support Windows OS'es to my customers, but in that respect, I compare it to being a "Narcissistic Psychopath". Making it play well with others, is not (directly) how Microsoft makes money.

But then again, that gives me a niche, showing people how, despite that, they can play well with each other, if you do it in certain ways...

A few tips, when you make the jump between fixing Windows, and installing Ubuntu (or any other Linux based OS):

  • Turn off SecureBoot in the BIOS. My machines here have SecureBoot enabled... And Ubuntu installs fine, BUT-- (And a big but) Some machines (example HP) do not like that at all, and tries to prevent anything beside Windows from booting with that enabled. Know 'the fight' before it starts.
  • If your machine has Intel RST/Optane, disable it and completely remove the module(s). That type of disk caching does not work for multi-boot systems.
  • If the BIOS SATA Mode is set to RAID instead of AHCI, boot from Windows to Safe Mode, on the way, interrupt the boot sequence into the BIOS setting to reset, the SATA mode to AHCI, save and exit... In Safe Mode, just that process of doing that will load the AHCI drivers into Windows, then close it down or reboot.
  • If you are using Windows BitLocker, suspend it before installing Ubuntu. Then turn it back on after the install.
Hi I upgraded to Windows 11 and when I did I had blank HD area of 600GB and windows put the windows recovery partition right after Widows 11 partition in the middle of the Hard Drive. I am wondering if this will screw up my dual boot install and I think I heard windows looks at the end of the hard drive for the recovery partition. If this is the case might just stop using windows and just install Ubuntu. Any suggestions?