Windows 8 Installation has failed at 11% FAT32

If you are upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 8 and you have a FAT 32 partition Windows 8 Installation will fail at 11% without telling you the reason why. The error message you will receive is “Windows 8 Installation has failed.”

Windows 8 Installation has failed
Upgrading Windows 8 won’t work on a FAT32 partition.

The solution is to either format your partition as NTFS or convert it from FAT32 to NTFS. Converting from FAT32 to NTFS is supposed to be safe but you should back up your data anyways. Formatting anew as NTFS will destroy the data on that partition. Thus, if you choose that option and want to keep your data a backup would be required.

You can view the instructions on the Microsoft support website for converting FAT32 to NTFS if you so choose.

You may also want to be aware that all your programs and their settings will be gone after upgrading from Windows XP. I would recommend backing up your “Documents and Settings” Folder and your “Program Files” folder before upgrading.

3 thoughts on “Windows 8 Installation has failed at 11% FAT32

  1. Hey

    Thanks for the information. I have had 1 machine of the 8 here at work fail to upgrade and it always failed at the 11% mark. Your solution was spot on and now I have managed to upgrade this machine also.

    As all the machines being upgraded were XP, I dont know why this machine was the only 1 that had FAT32 as the file system. All the others were NTFS.

    Your information made a difference to my day.

    Thanks.

  2. Hi,

    I get the same error, but my drive is already NTFS. Do you have any other suggestions why this error would occur?

    1. Unfortunately I don’t know if Windows setup creates any sort of error logs to check as to the reason for the error. The machine I was upgrading had Windows XP 32-bit. Although I was able to successfully upgrade to Windows 8 I later did a clean install of Windows 8 in order to use the 64-bit version. Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 8 is slightly pointless since you can only keep your documents and none of your programs. I recommend making a backup of your documents and doing a clean install of Windows 8.

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