RyanAZ

Last Updated: Aug 13, 2015 2 Minute Read

Ryan Mills

RyanAZInformation Technology Manager at NKK Switches of America, Inc.30 years in ITA+, CCNA, MCP (Vista), MCP (XP), MCSA, Network+, CompTIA A+

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These steps fixed the install of windows 10 upgrade when I received this error: couldn't update the system reserved partition

Don't forget to spice this up!!

Thanks and Enjoy Windows 10.

1 Steps total

Step 1: Below are all the steps

1. press win+r and type diskmgmt.msc

2. click on your C: drive

3. below the list of drives there will be a partition map, the first partition will be Data or some such, listed at 100MB, right click on it and go to change drive letters and paths -> add -> now choose Y: for the drive letter
**If you need to resize the partition I have used http://www.partition-magic.org/server-free.html with great success. This is a free version for server, but it works on Win 7 and up.

4. open an admin cmd prompt, in win8 you can press win+x and choose command prompt (admin), in win7 you have to create a shortcut for cmd.exe, then go to compatibility in the shortcut properties, and choose run as admin

5. type: Y: in the cmd window

6. run these commands:

takeown /f . /r /d y
icacls . /grant administrators:F /t

attrib -h -s -r bootmgr

NOTE: for the icacls command you can use your username instead of administrators, to find out your username type 'whoami'

7. now open explorer (win+e) go to the Y: drive under compuer, go into the Boot folder, and delete all languages other than en-US. Languages are in the form xx-XX. Make sure to shift+delete and not just delete so they don't go to the recycle bin. Empty the recycle bin afterwards just in case.

8. now go back to the admin command prompt, and type this command:

Windows 7 use this command
chkdsk Y: /F /X /L:5000

Windows 8 Use this command
chkdsk Y: /F /X /sdcleanup /L:5000

this truncates the NTFS log to 5MB, it can be very very big, not leaving enough space for the install
at the end of the output it should tell you that you have at least 50MB of free space on the partition
9. proceed with the windows 10 installation

Published: Jul 30, 2015 · Last Updated: Aug 13, 2015

References

Windows 8.1 Upgrade Issue with same error. Thanks to rkitover

36 Comments

Chipotle

TMFTP Jul 31, 2015 at 08:47pm

I used these same steps and I was able to upgrade just fine. Spice to you for posting it here!
Pimiento

pabloberaudo Aug 1, 2015 at 04:56pm

I tried this but when I run the command takeown /f . /r /d y it says the value "y" is not allowed for the option "/d",
(it is translated from spanish, so it may be different from what it says in english, I hope you understand it)
Tabasco

RyanAZ Aug 2, 2015 at 01:31am

Pabloberaudo,
Make sure the takeown switches are input correctly. I had the same issue and it was my input of the switches that was wrong.

Here it is how to type it in:
takeown SPACE /f SPACE . SPACE /r SPACE /d SPACE y

Make sure to type the . /r like this: dot space forward slash r

The y can be left out because it just confirms the statement with a YES.

Hope that helps!
Pimiento

matthewolesen Aug 2, 2015 at 03:55am

When I went into the partition file after doing all the steps. The bootmgr was a file not a folder....
Pimiento

pabloberaudo Aug 2, 2015 at 05:50am

Thank you for your response Ryanz, but I changed the size of the System partition from 100 MB to 400 MB and it worked perfectly, I'm running Windows 10 right now.
Pimiento

azharmohammed Aug 2, 2015 at 07:06pm

In response to matthewolesen, I ignore step 7 and went to 8. However if you are upgrading from Win7 you will have to type chkdsk Y: /F /X /L:5000 instead of chkdsk Y: /F /X ""/sdcleanup"" /L:5000 because Win7 does not recognize /sdcleanup and it worked for me. I'm currently downloading Win10 now. Hope this helps.
Pimiento

westoncover Aug 2, 2015 at 09:39pm

When I type in the command: "takeown /f . /r d y" it tells me that "'takeown' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Please help...
Tabasco

RyanAZ Aug 3, 2015 at 04:55pm

westoncover,
It should be located in C:\Windows\System32

You maybe missing the environmental path variable so just type in the full path.

At Command Prompt for reserved partition type:
C:\Windows\system32\takeown.exe /f . /r /d y
Poblano

roban711 Aug 4, 2015 at 01:24am

Blew my mind. Worked like a charm. Most kind sharing this!!!
Pimiento

andrewjohnston2 Aug 4, 2015 at 05:47pm

What if I can't even find a partition labelled data?
Poblano

roban711 Aug 4, 2015 at 05:53pm

If you go into disk management, it's the partition that doesn't have a drive letter and it is exactly 100mb in size. Give it a drive letter and proceed with the instructions to take ownership and attrib the files.
Pimiento

entizami Aug 4, 2015 at 09:36pm

Dear RyanAZ,

Thanks for the help. Would you be able to tell me how to extent the System Reserved? I followed your advice here but did not work for me.
Pimiento

harisnurfadhilah Aug 4, 2015 at 10:57pm

hi RyanAZ,

I currently run win7. I followed your advice here up to step 7. I cannot do step 8 because win7 cannot recognize /diskcleanup so I went with chkdsk Y: /F /X /L:5000 instead as suggested by azharmohammed. The thing is, after all that, the free space on my System Reserved is only 4,72 MB instead of 50 MB. What should I do? I cannot seem to extend the size of the Y: also...
Tabasco

RyanAZ Aug 4, 2015 at 11:52pm

Harisnurfadhilah,

So the default size of your System Reserved is 4.72?

Try using this tool to resize your partitions: http://www.partition-magic.org/server-free.html

It works very well and I have used it on 2003 Servers and it worked great. I tested it on a sandbox before I used it in production and did a rigorous A/V scan.
Poblano

roban711 Aug 5, 2015 at 12:37pm

did you open a command prompt in administrator mode (run as administraor)?