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.
1 Answer
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
)
- Open an Admin Terminal:
+R → Open:
powershell
→ Ctrl+Shift + OK - Backup current
winre.wim
:- 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"
- 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, removeY:
mountpoint:DiskPart
→Sel Vol Y
→Remove
)
- BIOS: May store WinRE on Boot partition: Mount Boot at
- Verify
- Create a 1024MB WinRE partition:
+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
- 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
-
So the WinRE mountpoint is now removed, but windows defragmenter recognizes the partition as a separate drive. It also now recognizes the system reserved boot partition. Is it possible to hide them like windows does normally?– EnforcerCommented Jan 6, 2020 at 15:01
-
For that, I don't have an answer. Do you have a BIOS motherboard or UEFI? BIOS: setting the WinRE partition ID to
0x27
(#3.3) identifies it as a special Windows Recovery partition, whereas w/ UEFI, the same is set via GPT IDde94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac
, w/ partition being hidden via GPT attribute0x8000000000000001
(#3.6). I don't have a BIOS PC to troubleshoot withDiskPart
(verifyDiskPart
is showing the ID -lis vol
>sel vol <#>
>det vol
), so you're likely going to need to refer to Microsoft Docs, or create a second question on SuperUser for this specific issue– JW0914Commented Jan 6, 2020 at 15:17 -
@Enforcer I've just checked my own PC and w/ UEFI, the WinRE partition is shown in Disk Defragmenter (likely because it's formatted NTFS)– JW0914Commented Jan 6, 2020 at 15:23
-
Perhaps it is visible because I'vs set it up as id=27 instead of 0x27?– EnforcerCommented Jan 6, 2020 at 15:26
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I have checked it out with "det vol" and it says that it isnt hidden.– EnforcerCommented Jan 6, 2020 at 15:28