Change Bios from Legacy to UEFI

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Ran the Windows compatibility program. I have to change my Bios from Legacy to UEFI for Windows 11 to be installed.
Can I do this from within Windows or do I have to wipe my hard drive and install a fresh copy of Windows 10 before installing the upgrade?

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It shouldn’t impact your running system.  It’s a bios setting in the computer.  That said, that may be the first of many blockers – the tool only shows you one at a time.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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I have discovered that the Legacy setting means that my hard drive is set up with MBR and TPU, though present, is disabled. Changing the BIOS setting to UFEI gives a refusal to boot (blinking cursor). The solution is to reformat the HD with GPT. Not something for the faint of heart. The problem then goes away.

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How to Change Legacy to UEFI in Windows 10

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A1ex, Ascaris

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To convert a MBR drive to UEFI without having to re install, check out the mbr2gpt utility built into windows 10.

Google “How to convert MBR to GPT drive to switch BIOS to UEFI on Windows 10” for the tutorial.

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The Windows Central article here provides a very detailed step-by-step explanation of the MBR-to-GPT and BIOS-to-UEFI conversion processes.  Note that it recommends rebooting to Windows “Advanced startup” for the GPT conversion that involves creating an EFI System Partition (ESP) on the drive.  It can be done from the Windows Desktop, but rebooting to the “Advanced startup” command prompt is safer.

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