Good morning all. I am having a very confusing problem that could certainly use your assistance.
I wanted to install Windows 11 on my laptop. The laptop does not meet the requirements for such an install. I found a procedure on YouTube that suggested it could be done. Before beginning this procedure I had read that the PC should be set at UEFI boot settings. When I went into the Bios I found it was set to a legacy boot. Using established procedures I changed the boot to UEFI. I also turned on secure boot.

When I next booted, I received the following error message: "no bootable device, F1 to retry boot, F2 to set utility, F5 for diagnostics." By going to F2 I was able to reboot. This her occurred several times. After rebooting, using the YouTube video I was able to install Windows 11. During the install updates were downloaded. During this procedure the PC had to reboot but could not. I got the original error message.

I went back into the bios but could not find any hard drive. I ran the diagnostics and again could not find a hard drive. I thought maybe my SSD was toast. I tried several older SATA hard drives with the same result. I have tried various combinations of boot settings but with no success. Right now I have a beautiful paperweight with Windows 11 installed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry, I can't help you with this Joe but I'm sure once Jay or Stephen see your post they'll be able to help you out.

I couldn't install it on my Windows 10 laptop as the CPU wasn't up to it plus there wasn't enough room on my SSD for it. I wasn't brave enough to take shortcuts as I knew it wouldn't be supported if I did.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

You will probably need to switch the drive format from MBR to GPT in order to make it boot when switched to UEFI. There are many free ways to do with with step by step instructions. Just do a search for MBR to GPT.

I mentioned that I had tried several hard drives to get my laptop back up. I found one that allowed to reboot the PC. I decided that I would not continue my Win 11 experiment.

Perhaps I'll try again later when I am more knowledgeable. Inthe mean time I want to thank all of you for your asvice.

Did you change back to Legacy boot? This should put you back where you started.

Yes, thank you for asking. I may format one of the drives and use a usb backup and start over. I'll keep you informed.

You MAY also find that the drivers needed for the drive are different between legacy and UEFI when switched in the BIOS. This is a situation where booting to Safe Mode MAY help. At least I saw it in the early days of UEFI.

If it still applies the problem is that UEFI and legacy use different drivers for the hard drives. Granted is the fact that my experience with this issue was long ago and the options were EFI or IDE in the BIOS. Still I think this MAY apply as IDE would be like your legacy option and EFI would be like your UEFI option.

Safe Mode offers a bit of a trick here. Set your BIOS to legacy and boot. Set the system to restart in Safe Mode once in Windows. On the restart jump to the BIOS and and set to UEFI and let the system continue to Safe Mode. Safe Mode 'looks' at the boot drive and loads the needed basic drivers. After this you have both sets of drivers installed and either mode will work.

Dvair also brought up going from MBR to GPT as to the drive setup which may well be needed. Doing this could even solve the issue without all my stuff as stated above but it is possible that it could take the combination. A good utility for converting a drive from MBR to GPT is EaseUS Partition Master. There is a free and paid version. The free version should do the job.
https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html

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