Cannot upgrade due to unsupported disk layout for UEFI firmware

This problem is driving me nuts. I've had Win10 installed for ages and no problems until Upgrade 1511 came along. How come Windows 10 worked all that time and now refuses to upgrade?

Can anyone provide a fix for this problem:

Upgrade to Windows 10 Home, version 1511, 10586


error message:
"Windows 10 couldn't be installed
*Windows couldn't be installed because this PC has an unsupported disk layout for UEFI firmware."

All help will be greatly appreciated.

Post a snapshot of a fullscreen Disk Management Window:

To open Disk Management, press Windows key+r, type diskmgmt.mscand press Enter or click GO. Make it full screen. Expand the fields as necessary so everything can be seen.

Press the Print Screenkey then open Paint(Press Windows key, type paintthen click on Paintat the top) and paste the image from the clipboard into Paint.

Save the paint image to your hard drive (File / Save as).

How to Take a Screenshot in Windows 10

Hi Ztruker and thank you for replying. My apologies for delay as I have been busy with work. The disk management image is as follows. As "J" disk uses my full name I have blanked it out.

I don't see an EFI partition which I thought UEFI required. This is what mine looks like:



Need help with this from some of the disk layout wizards here. Hopefully they will stop by soon.

I don't see an EFI partition which I thought UEFI required.

Second partition on Drive 1. ESP = EFI System Partition. I would try disconnected Drive 0 (J:) and then trying the upgrade. Actually, I would disconnect all other hard drives except for drive 1 which contains all the system partitions.

Try changing the SATA Controller. That's what I did when I had this problem before (But updating to a different version).

I had a weird partition problem which stopped Windows 10 installing - see my solution here Solution for Failed Windows 10 Update Installation Error 0x80004005 You could check the integrity of the ESP partition.

There should be an error logging file setuperr.log in the temporary windows installation directory. Is there an error message towards the end of this file which gives you a clue what may be wrong?

You also have a drive letter assigned to the ESP partition. You could unassign the drive letter to see if that helps.

Sorry, all of the above solutions are too confusing for me to make any sense of. I need step by step instructions. But thank you for the replies.

I can't find any error log in the file you mentioned.

I still do not understand how I could have installed Windows 10 in the first place. Why is the problem only appearing now? Seems to me the problem is with Microsoft being too picky about some minor technicality. They should produce a tool that re-creates the partition structure that they require, rather than leave customers guessing. I am actually thinking of reverting back to an older version of Windows that works, or finding a different O/S altogether. Windows 10 has been a big failure.

This should not be confusing:

Second partition on Drive 1. ESP = EFI System Partition. I would try disconnected Drive 0 (J:) and then trying the upgrade. Actually, I would disconnect all other hard drives except for drive 1 which contains all the system partitions.

Try it and see what happens.

Whoever had a weird partition that stopped Windows from installing, when you boot into the installer press the keys Shift and F10. Command Prompt should pop up. Type in "Diskpart" and wait. Then type in "list disk." Once that's been executed select the disk you want to erase (e.g. "select disk 0" or "select disk 1"). Once you've seleted it, type in "clean all." This command would take 1-4 hours to exceed but it COMPLETELY erases your hard drive with 0s and this is the best way to clean it. Then continue with the installation and when it says Custom or Upgrade, select Custom and there should be only one partition. Select that than click next. There, you're done!