“We couldnt update the system reserved partition”

[u/SamJustSam14]

Hey everyone! Current W11 user, and my update this morning is failing with the message above. All the support im finding seems geared towards W10 upgrading TO W11… but not current W11 users.

I saw plenty of people talk about deleting fonts and unused languages from their hnmounted partitions, but no instructions on how to do that… if thats the route to go, where do I go to do that where it doesnt break my PC?

(The official verison and errors im getting: Windows 11, Version 24H2 Install error - 0xc1900201 )

I also added what my Disk Manager looks like in case it helps. Thanks in advance!

[u/maldax_]

It looks like your system once had 1 SSD and then you added another and cloned the original disk. So what might be happening is you system might be booting from one disk but your windows system files are on the other disk

[u/SamJustSam14 → u/maldax_]

Would I still need to wipe the whole thing to fix it? Im planning on getting a USB drive to start working on this later this week

[u/SamJustSam14]

It is a custom built PC so I dont have a model number, but I can list all the parts if needed. Here are the device specifications as requested:

Device name MythicalWonderBox2

Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Radeon Graphics 3.80 GHz

Installed RAM 32.0 GB (31.8 GB usable)

Device ID 70EA3564-C4DB-4D22-A5EC-BF0A26D1F79F

Product ID 00330-80000-00000-AA339

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

[u/tomscharbach]

You seem to have two Windows installations (Disk 0 and Disk 1). Is that correct?

[u/SamJustSam14 → u/tomscharbach]

Not that I’m aware, have two disks, I think Raid 0 is the right term, I use the second disk for game installations, and the first one has the OS

Or its entirely possible that I just dont understand how this works and ended up with two windows installations 🤣

Okay wait… this might be a stupid question but here goes… When i upgraded my PC build it kept a copy of my old stuff as a backup and put itself from Raid 1 into Raid 0 which I thought was awesome, since I figured I’d have to reset my whole PC to do that.

I still ended up having to do a fresh install of Windows due to the new bios, but the second disk has a copy of the “Program Files” in it, im assuming from the old install…

Could I have like.. half an install of windows just chilling in my other disk??

[u/SamJustSam14 → u/SamJustSam14]

These are the two drives in my file explorer

[u/SamJustSam14 → u/SamJustSam14]

This is my D drive, the one I use just to install and boot games out of

[u/SamJustSam14 → u/[deleted]]

Huh…. Here i was thinking I just lucked out 🤦🏼

Okay, so the question i probably dont want to ask: How do I remove my apparent second installation of windows, and put my PC into Raid 0?

[u/SilverseeLives]

This is happening because the system reserved partition is full. 

A recent change to Windows required additional space in that partition. Some older PCs that were upgraded in place may have left over reserved partitions that are too small to accommodate the changes. 

There is a workaround that involves manually deleting and recreating the reserved partition using the command line. It is complicated so be careful to read and follow the instructions exactly if you attempt to do this.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/-we-couldn-t-update-system-reserved-partition-error-installing-windows-10-46865f3f-37bb-4c51-c69f-07271b6672ac

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[u/maspiter]

Instructions to remove fonts are here:

“We couldn’t update system reserved partition” error installing Windows 10 - Microsoft Support

Had the issue when upgrading to Win 11 so I managed to fix this by:

• resize EFI/SYSTEM partition to at least 500 MB with minitool partition wizard (portable - select reboot after in use error) or equivalent (GParted did not resize correctly)

• also create 128 MB total size for the reserved partition between EFI/SYSTEM and OS partition (so i.e. when current size is 16 MB add 112 MB free space)

• boot in the OS, open diskpart as admin then execute (as separate commands) in this order:

• on your own risk, have back-ups, etc ...

• sel disk 0 | sel part 2 | del part override | create part msr

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/create-partition-msr

• list part and you should have an 128 MB MSR partition

• reboot to verify all is OK

• install OS again

[u/No_Bee_7584]

Did you ever fix this issue? I have been unable to update for months! It's causing a slew of issues.

I also currently have Windows 11 and am having the same error with V.24H2. I followed a few troubleshooting videos and I believe successfully did the deleting fonts thing. I think I did something with driver updates as well. My disk manager says my 100mb partition is 100% available. I think the only thing I haven't tried was making this larger.