Forum Discussion
MBR2GPT Disk layout validation failed
OK, it looks like you may have missed much of the description of what I have already done and reported, with all that I have found out so far.
First (technovicenot), I did find out that you need to remove all but three partitions max, and I did that early on. (That's the origin of that free space that ended up in the middle of my disk, which used to be a recovery partition.)
Second (Mr. G), I surely DID find the log, and previously reported the error message it is showing. It states that the FIRST (GPR protective) partition begins too close to the FRONT of the disk and has to be moved about 17K further back -- not that the LAST partition is too close to the END. If you missed this detail (which is the crux of my problem), it may be advantageous to review my earlier post, because there is a lot of other related information in it.
Third (technovicenot), I can't shrink "all" the partitions, as partition 1 is unshrinkable, and it's the one giving me errors.
So just to put this "solution" to rest, I shrunk my final partition (C:) to the bone (apparently that's the default if you forget to tell SHRINK how much you want shrunk... but whatever, it should still work) and reran MBR2GPT. No dice (see images). The log still says the FIRST partition is too close to the BEGINNING of the disk. There's free space all over this disk, so if MBR2GPT had any idea of how to redistribute it where it think it is needed, it would have been able to do that.
So I still don't know how to beat the problem of the GPR protective partition being too close to the BEGINNING of the disk.
I do understand your point about "why upgrade to W11," but right now I have VM images that are still running under legacy mode. I would AT LEAST like to upgrade that. Someday, W11 will get reliable enough to use in production (in the meanwhile, I can experiment with it -- after all, it's only a VM) and I'll just have to do it then anyway.
Upgrading my W10 to W11 instead of just creating a new W11 VM means my OS license and my user files will carry forward without extra cost and migration inconvenience.
I was just able to have mbr2gpt /validate /disk:1 /allowfullos run successfully after shrinking BOTH volumes listed in Disk Management by 17MB each (for Disk 1). One of the messages above made me realize that there are TWO partitions listed for my new drive that I've been trying to validate successfully (so I can convert it from MBR to GPT).
I cloned my SSD850 drive to a new SSD870 drive, but the new drive kept saying failed when running the /validate command. I read the reason for the error in the setuperr.log in C:\windows, but I was only shrinking the first volume by 17MB. After I shrunk the second volume (listed to the right of the first volume in Disk Management) by 17MB, the command was successful.
Now, I will see if the new drive will convert to GPT. And, if it's successful, I will boot to the BIOS and disable CSM Support, so it will change to UEFI--and then hope it will boot to Windows after I set the new drive to boot first and disconnect the original drive.