Cannot install Windows 11 - Error 0xc1900101

Thank you Eddie, this makes a lot of sense and explains the issues I was having. I was able to fix my error and get upgraded just a couple days after the dev branch was released. I was able to see what was causing the error and the setupdiag tool And it was caused by a faulty driver for a realtek network controller. I had tried many times to get the latest driver from the manufacturer's website but my problem was that Microsoft was pulling in a new driver in place of the one I had already installed on my system and in doing so caused the update to fail. The driver Microsoft pulled was from 2015 and it completely wiped out my 2021 driver. I was lucky enough to have two NICs on my board so I disabled the realtek NIC in BIOS and I was able to update using my Intel nic.

So even if you have the latest drivers the upgrade can still fail if Microsoft decides that it wants to pull an old driver to replace your current driver.

I am seeing this same error code repeatedly (Upgrade to Windows 11 - Error 0xc1900101). My PC only has SSD and nvme storage, and I do not really like the idea of cleaning it out and installing a base W10 again. My PC meets all the requirements for W11.

This error seems to impact many Insider users and prevents me (and others) from doing any testing of W11, which the Insider program is all about.

Is any work being done to resolve this installation issue, or are there any proven method to get past this error code?

Thanks,

Alfred Christensen

0xc1900101 errors are generic rollback errors, usually caused by a faulting driver. There is not a single fix for the error. You will need to run SetupDiag to get a better idea of what is causing the issue. To reduce the risk of getting this error, you should ensure you are running the latest drivers from your device manufacturer's website (not Windows Update or Device Manager).

SetupDiag will also give you an extended error code that can help.

-Eddie

I am seeing this same error code repeatedly (Upgrade to Windows 11 - Error 0xc1900101). My PC only has SSD and nvme storage, and I do not really like the idea of cleaning it out and installing a base W10 again. My PC meets all the requirements for W11.

This error seems to impact many Insider users and prevents me (and others) from doing any testing of W11, which the Insider program is all about.

Is any work being done to resolve this installation issue, or are there any proven method to get past this error code?

Thanks,

Alfred Christensen

I found one way to install Windows 11. Whip my computer clean.

1. Partitioned the SSD, with only native W10.
2. Booted from that partition.
3. Went to the Insider site and downloaded W11.
4. Success.
5. Reinstalled the 20+ applications.
6. Reloaded the 74+gb of files and documents.

I have read many unique ways to get around the installation challenges. Some work for those technically oriented people and some don't. No one, including Microsoft, believes this volume of failure, would EVER fly in a general release. There would be 500,000,000 calls to the help desk. It begs the question, why is there an advance release, that in over half of the brave people agreeing to take this task on, that fails over and over and over again?

To be perfectly clear. My beef is not with W11. It seems to work fine. It is with the installation program! Windows 11 team - be proud. 11 Installation team - not so much.

My only drive is SSD so if I unplug it, there is nothing to boot to. My failure seems to happen after 85% of the installation and several reboots. I hope this helps diagnose the problem. I can submit logs but no one has contacted me. Next week I will try a different process - I will open my own feedback instead of updating this one. By the way, I have Windows 11 running on another machine with nVme SSD, so the problem isn't only SSD.