Cannot upgrade a W10 box to W11 with Samsung SSD 980 and SQL Server 2016 installed. UPDATE.

[Joerg_Debus]

@Angelina2552

Hi,
my W10 box (21H2 with all Updates) is ranked "Ready for W11" by Health Check (See below (00) ...) but no offering for an upgrade received yet from WUS.

After downloading the Setup Assistant for an in place upgrade from MS download:

• The setup starts successfully with the download.
• It progresses normally to the stage where some last checks are done.
• Stops with two messages that now say something is not supported yet (See below (10) ...) .

The logs (See below (30) ...) say, that Samsung SSDs and SQL Server of all versions are currently not supported. This is an outdated judgement, because the MS-Disk Controller driver (Stornvme) has an official fix now (See below (20) ... ) to handle this incompatibility.

I have posted this bug which might hit thousands of Windows 10 users in MA Q/A, Windows Insider feedback and in the feedback from my W10 box. No reaction.

My questions:

1. Who can alert Ms Upgrade team of this bug? I have addressed Angelina2552, who is an INsider MVP hoping that she might help.
2. When knowing where the logic for these tests is stored, I could well path it by myself and check it out.

TIA.

UP

(00) - W11 Ready Diagnose

(00) - W11 Ready Diagnose

(10) - Error Messages

(10) - Error Messages

(20) - Patch with stornvme Parameter

(20) - Patch with stornvme Parameter

(30) - Error messages with reason from upgrade job

(30) Error message from folder Panther

End of post

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hello Joerg!

This is Angelina. Thank you so much for reaching out regarding this matter. I will try to reach out and see if I can get some help getting this issue resolved.

One thing I would like to suggest is attempting to install Windows 11 via a USB bootable media using the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool. (https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11)
This may allow you to install Windows 11, but I am not entirely sure as I have not encountered this problem before.

[#3]

@Joerg_Debus 

Hello

MTC is a place for discussion, to reach directly to Microsoft engineers please submit your suggestions here:

Send feedback to Microsoft with the Feedback Hub app

[#4]

Hi AndrzejX,
Thank you very much for your hint. I posted that the feedback hub of the W10 running my box, I did that in my Windows Insider account. But it was in vain. This is particularly surprising, because similar problems were posted by people having problems with SQL Server 2019 after installation.

Because the technical issue is clearly identified and a patch is available for W11 it seems, that W11 migration team is not in charge of handling this type of a complaint. They are more interested in colors and sounds, etc.

Best regards
JD

[#5]

@Angelina2552 

Hi Angelina,
it's great to hear from you!

The problem is easily to reproduce: Clone any W10 system disk to an Samsung SSD 980, install SQL Server 2016 - 2019 and run the W11 migration assistant. Et voilà you get the message.

Because there is a fix for W11 which is applied via the registry (driver parameter)  it should be no problem to upgrade if SQL Server could be blocked to start up after the installation. Unfortunately I have no idea whether the service settings for SQL Server are left untouched during migration. If they would be reset to the default, a disaster might occur, if the SQL Server tries to restart its masterdb with wrong block sizes. So using tricking the upgrade with an offline installation might overcome the block but produce major problems with the data bases.

So the W11 migration team should update the the upgrade process with an already available fix. Which may be published as a hot fix by MS support.

Until now, I'm completely depending on some "Influencer", who can pinpoint the W11 Migration Team to this problem.

Best regards

UP

[#6]

@Angelina2552
Hi Angelina,
I have used the Media Creation Tool in 2 versions to execute an in place upgrade. Same problem. Samsung SSD 980 Pro blocks the upgrade.

Another alternative is to create a physical medium and use this for an in place upgrade. If this would succeed, will my W11 than receive the normal maintenance?

TIA and best regards
UP

[#7]

@Joerg_Debus  Hi

Oh it is not a good idea to use a USB stick in your case, it usually works very well for a clean installation of Windows , which will remove everything and reinstall the system , so you will lose your data , the in-place upgrade will rather end with an error .
Check it out on another computer                                                                                          SQL Not Working After Upgrading to Windows 11? - Microsoft Q&A

https://docs.microsoft.com/pl-pl/troubleshoot/sql/admin/troubleshoot-os-4kb-disk-sector-size

[#8]

Hi Joerg.

I've been thinking and doing some research about this problem. I may have found a possible solution. Is the Samsung SSD your only drive or do you have a second one?
The reason I ask this is because if you have multiple drives you may be able to have one drive to support your Operating System (one different than the SSD you have), and one for all of your applications, files, and personal data. Since at this point it seems like a compatibility issue between your SSD and Windows 11

If you are able to try this idea, you'll still get all of the updates and drivers your device needs through the drive with the OS on it.

[#9]

@Angelina2552
Hi Angelina,
sorry for the delay ;). In between. I have tested your recommendation. Unfortunately it does not help. All my SQL data bases are stored on Samsung 980 Pro devices because I need the speed of those for system test purposes. The incompatibility you have mentioned is well known and an official fix for W11 has been published (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/admin/troubleshoot-os-4kb-disk-sector-size). I have also tested SQL Server 2019 on a W11 box using one Samsung 980 Pro SSD and this parameter setting. It works flawlessly.

Pls. take into account, that this is not a specific problem of my configuration. There will be thousands of developer with W10 system using Samsung 980 PRO SSDs.

My problem is the missing update to the Upgrade process to implement the above fix and no longer block the upgrade. I also could replace all Samsung SSDs with another disks, let it upgrade and clone the disks back to 980 PRO SSD. That's a job for days

I think, the best approach could be to alert Jennifer G. I have already posted this topic in my Insider account without any reaction from Jennifer. Which seems to be an indication, that real power users like developers only sparsely opt in for Windows Insider.

[#10]

@Angelina2552 

Hi,

meanwhile, I became a little impatient. MS Insiders are busy with layouts of explorer-Gui and alike. I could not alert anybody to fix this bug in W11 upgrade software.

So I decided to spent some money for a new NVME SSD, this time I took the 2 TB Fury. Then I cloned the system volume to the new SSD, removed all Samsung SSDs containing data and disabled the SQL Server service. The try to upgrade ran to completion.

The new Start-menu is a complete disaster for me. But after checking the parameters of the NVME driver and enabling SQL Server again, everything is OK for me. The SQL Server IO-performance seems to be even a little better than with W10.

Note: Only changing the system volume's SSD to the Kingston SSD, did not the trick. I had to remove all Samsung SSD 980 PRO. Older Samsung SSDs were ignored.

Angelina, if you would label this reply a a valid answer this might help other people with SQL Server installed on there W10 boxes.

[#11]

Hi, to change the designation (best answer) you can contact the MTC team by e-mail, or make a request (with inappropriate content)
in the answer you have already tagged, ask the moderator to change the tag.
Best regards

[#12]

Hello.  I would like to know if any progress was made on this issue.  I have also encountered this issue where the upgrade tool blocks installation if it detects a Samsung SSD and SQL Server (in my case 2019.) This is particularly frustrating as I do not use the Samsung 980 for my database files. Nor is the 980 my system drive. The tool doesn't seem to check for this and the very fact that I even have this hard drive seems to block me from upgrading to Windows 11.  As I do not even use the 980 for databases this seems like the cure is worse than the disease as I will not likely encounter any issues running SQL Server on Windows 11 unless I move the DB files to the unsupported drive.  It is good to know that I can't use this drive for my DB files but I should not be prevented from installing Windows 11.