How to fix errors converting drive from MBR to GPT on Windows 10

On Windows 10, if you have to convert the drive from MBR to GPT, you may encounter some issues along the way, but you can fix them quite easily, depending on the error in question. In this guide, I will outline the troubleshooting steps to resolve the most common problems.

If you want to upgrade to Windows 11, one of the requirements is to use the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), which also requires the hard drive to use the GUID Partition Table (GPT) style.

Although this isn’t an issue on modern hardware or when performing a clean installation of Windows 11, if you have a computer with older hardware running Windows 10, there’s a good chance the system is configured to use the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), and as a result, there’s also a chance that the drive is set to use the Master Boot Record (MBR) style.

Usually, you can convert the drive from MBR to GPT from the desktop environment or the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) with a couple of commands. However, when performing this conversion, at least two things could happen. The validation may fail, or the system may have issues trying to update the WinRE environment after the conversion.

In this guide, I’ll outline the troubleshooting steps to successfully change the partition style from MBR to GPT on Windows 10.

Fix disk layout validation failed error on Windows 10

If you receive the “Disk layout validation failed for disk” error when running the mbr2gpt /validate command on Windows 10, it’s usually caused by an unsupported drive layout, corrupted partition table, or BitLocker protection.

Unsupported Disk Layout

The drive might not meet the necessary requirements for conversion. If this is the case, you must ensure that the storage has no more than three primary partitions (MBR supports four, but Windows requires one to be free for the EFI system partition).

When trying to perform a conversion, I noticed that the drive included four partitions, including one labeled “2 MB RAW.” Deleting this partition resolved the issue.

To fix extra partition problems when converting from MBR to GPT, use these steps:

  1. Open Start.

  2. Search for Disk Management and click the top result to open the app.

  3. Right-click the “2 MB RAW” partition and select the Delete Volume option.

  4. Click the Yes button.

Once you complete the steps, restart the computer to confirm that everything is working correctly, and then proceed with the steps to convert the drive to the GPT partition style.

Disable BitLocker encryption

To disable the BitLocker protection on Windows 10, use these steps:

  1. Open Start.

  2. Search for Control Panel and click the top result to open the app.

  3. Click on System and Security.

  4. Click on BitLocker Drive Encryption.

  5. Click the “Turn off BitLocker” option under the “Operating system drive” section.

  6. Click the “Turn off BitLocker” option one more time.

After you complete the steps, you can try to convert the drive from MBR to GPT one more time.

Partition table corruption 

If the drive is dealing with a corrupted partition table, you can try using the BootRec tool. However, this tool will help you repair boot-related issues in the Master Boot Record (MBR), which is related to the partition table, but it doesn’t directly repair the table.

Usually, if there is a partition problem, it’s recommended that you transfer your data to another drive and then perform a clean installation of Windows 11.

Fix MBR2GPT failed to update ReAgent.xml error on Windows 10

If you see the “MBR2GPT: Failed to update ReAgent.xml, please try to manually disable and enable WinRE” error, it doesn’t indicate that the mbr2gpt /convert command failed entirely.

Actually, it was completed successfully, but there was a specific issue with the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).

The error indicates that the conversion process could not correctly update the WinRE configuration file (ReAgent.xml), which is used to manage the recovery environment.

You may encounter this problem if WinRE was disabled before the conversion and the MBR2GPT tool couldn’t update its configuration. The recovery partition may have been altered or is missing, among other issues.

If this is the case, you don’t have to re-run the MBR2GPT tool. You only have to complete the switch from BIOS to UEFI and then some specific commands using the REAgentC tool with these instructions:

  1. Open Start.

  2. Search for Command Prompt, right-click the top result, and click the Run as administrator option.

  3. Type the following command to disable any active recovery image mapped to the online image and press Enter:

    reagentc /disable

  4. Type the following command to re-enable the recovery image and press Enter:

    reagentc /enable

  5. Type the following command to check the state of the Windows Recovery Environment and press Enter:

    reagentc /info

Once you complete the steps, you shouldn’t have any issues accessing the recovery experiment after converting the drive from MBR to GPT to switch from BIOS to UEFI.


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