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I have just installed a fresh windows 10 v1909. Having installed some apps, I activated bitlocker. Bitlocker warned me saying "something" about a recovery partition not existing and how it can be made manually if needed. When I went to disk manager there indeed was no recovery partition and all of my advanced startup options were reduced to boot options. No command prompt, no restore points... How do I remake a recovery partition that windows usually automatically creates and how do I return all of the options to WinRe/Advanced startup? Edit: I would also like to add that the System reserved partition no longer exists and the one from which windows boots is unnamed.

Enforcer
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1 Answers1

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PCs with BIOS motherboards are often configured without a WinRE partition, instead storing WinRE on the Boot or OS partition

WinRE should always be on its own partition, but only Win ≥10 clean installs do so:

  • Windows ≥10: \\WinRE_partition\Recovery\WindowsRE
    (Upgrade: C:\Recovery\WindowsRE)
  • Windows ≤8.1: C:\Recovery\WindowsRE

To move WinRE to its own partition: (ReAgentC)

  1. Open an Admin Terminal: WinKey+R → Open: powershell → Ctrl+Shift + OK
  2. Backup current winre.wim:
    1. Verify %WinDir%\System32\Recovery\winre.wim exists: 
      ls "C:\Windows\System32\Recovery" | FindStr /I "winre.wim" ; ls "C:\Windows\System32\Recovery" -Hidden | FindStr /I "winre.wim"
    2. If it doesn't: 
      Xcopy /H "C:\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.wim" "C:\Windows\System32\Recovery"
      • BIOS: May store WinRE on Boot partition: Mount Boot at Y: → Update WIM path
        (Once copied over, remove Y: mountpoint: DiskPart → Sel Vol Y → Remove)

  3. Create a 1024MB WinRE partition: WinKey+R → Open: DiskPart → OK 
    ::# WinRE partition should have 320MB free for future WIM size increases

    ::# Select OS partition: 
sel vol c
    

    ::# Shrink partition by 1024MB [RAW]:
shrink desired=1024 minimum=1024
    

    ::# Create WinRE partition:
    

    ::# BIOS:
cre par pri size=1024 id=27

::# UEFI:
cre par pri size=1024 id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac
gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001


    

    ::# Format partition:
format fs=ntfs quick label=WinRE
    

    ::# Mount partition:
assign letter=z
    

    exit

  4. Disable WinRE, set custom location of winre.wim, and re-enable WinRE: (ReAgentC) 
    # Copy WinRE.wim:
  MkDir "Z:\Recovery\WindowsRE" ; Xcopy /H "C:\Recovery\WindowsRE\WinRE.wim" "Z:\Recovery\WindowsRE"

    Disable WinRE:
    

    ReAgentC /Disable
    

    Set Custom WinRE Path:
    

    ReAgentC /SetREimage /Path "Z:\Recovery\WindowsRE"
    

    Enable WinRE:
    

    ReAgentC /Enable
    

    Verify:
    

    ReAgentC /Info
    

    Remove WinRE mount point:
    

    DiskPart
    sel vol z
    remove
    exit

JW0914
  • 9,096