I have a Thinkpad T1 Gen 8 (a Thinkpad P1 Gen 8 with different graphics). I replaced factory NVME with two larger drivers and installed Linux. One of the 4T drives has the following layout (GPT):
[3.4T Linux][4G Swap][256G free][1G Linux EFI]
I wanted to install Windows in the free space strictly for unforseen situations where I can’t do something under Linux. The Linux EFI is at the end of drive purposely to make Windows create its own EFI at the start of the free space and reduce the likelihood of a future update messing a shared EFI partition.
I downloaded official Win11_24H2_English_x86_amd64.iso from Microsoft (modulo a typo in the file name), and thrown it on a Ventoy USB drive. It boots correctly, proceeds with the installation, but fails the moment it comes to the first reboot, the installation fails: in the default mode, simply with ‘failed to install windows’, in the ‘previous installer’, it says it couldn’t set up the machine to boot into windows. I tried with Secure Boot off and on user/setup mode, with Boot order lock on and off. Same result. When I mount the bootloader in spe under windows, I see the partition is completely empty. However, 200MB should be more than enough, as on my Surface I have the same amount, and the boot partition is shared with Linux.
Here’s parted output in sectors:
Model: Samsung SSD 990 PRO 4TB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 7814037168s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 2048s 7266680831s 7266678784s Linux volume 0
2 7266680832s 7275069439s 8388608s linux-swap(v1) Linux swap 0 swap
3 7275069440s 7275479039s 409600s fat32 Basic data partition boot, esp, no_automount
4 7275479040s 7275511807s 32768s Microsoft reserved partition msftres, no_automount
5 7275511808s 7811940351s 536428544s ntfs Windows msftdata
6 7811940352s 7814035452s 2095101s fat32 Primary bootloader boot, esp
Has anyone encountered the problem? Is there a firmware option I missed? I still have the original disk with factory windows; if all else fails, can I resize those partitions and somehow transfer them to the new disk? Obviously, the partition layout will differ. I can try to clone their contents exactly, but I don’t know if I can transfer their UUIDs and PARTUUIDs, which obviously would be a problem (although maybe one the repair tool could solve). Updating the efiramfs manually to boot the Windows EFI partition is not a problem, I can do it manually.
