In my all my years using Windows, the Windows Recovery Partition has NEVER helped or worked right.

Hey Chris, another great video tutorial, clear and highly educational, I am following Your work for more than two Yrs :)

Hi, used your video from 2 years ago. How to repair startup (something like that). Worked great on Win 11. You were right, that the first instructions you gave are usually left out. Other guides did not work because of it. Great work. I'll check this out, to be sure everything is set correctly.

This helped fix the dreaded win 10 update in jan 2024 for me! Thanks so much, was looking for a while and your video not only solved it, it covered enough edge case scenarios that when things went astray I was able to continue. I also learnt a lot along the way. Much appreciated :)

Thanks Chris, I had to reconfigure this for a user yesterday due to a bad Windows update. I used a guide but have watched this video after for a better understanding.

Thank you a lot Chris , for this vidéo, U are a very good teacher 👌 A Frenchman, who loves your job! 🤙

Very good guide, recently I have been looking into the GPT disk structures with a view to understand how to reconstruct the EFI,MSR & WinRE partitions from scratch on a fresh disk after restoring only the windows partition without 3rd party tools, DISM truly is a wonderful tool :) as long as you track the version of dism used to create the image, some times newer versions wont unpack older ones

Very well explained Chris, thanks!

Thank you for this info. I had found a bunch of other videos with people just doing the process and not explaining anything and i was getting pretty frustrated. but thanks to you i got it working!

Thanks, you just reminded me to make a restore point

Thanks. This finally solved all my issues arround WindowsRE. All infos in one video, great.

Thank you for tis video, I could not run MBR2GPT to clone a customers drive from an old PC to a new one and you just saved me a ton of time trying to get this to work right

Hey Chris, a video I think would be a neat one is going over different bootloaders, like comparing GRUB2 to rEFInd. I've been using rEFInd more on my laptops lately cause it detects all bootable media on each boot instead of having to add entries like in GRUB, so rather than mashing the button to get into my BIOS or Ventoy it's just there in the list. Also I think you can arguably make it look better with the theme support of it, though more limited selection than GRUB

I never thought I would actually follow this tutorial, but I did since I actually really needed it 😅

so clear chris.. thanks a lot... tried after partition clone... working

Renaming or (re)moving ReAgent.xml is crucial for this to work. Thanks for the guide!

Most likely why mine doesnt work it's at the start not the end wooooooooooo but thank God for you man your video is the only one to help me fix this problem so far of not being able to enable the recovery, thank you so much went through like 18 vids

Awesome video, thank you.

The Recovery partition can also be the first partition on a gpt disk. Btw, great video and explanation

At first i thought that ReAgentC was 3rd party software, but its actually built into Windows. I didn't know that, well thanks for showing it

@Chris, you should make a video on what modifications would be need to make this recovery partition a custom image. That is something I would love to be able to have, if that is possible.

Extremely good tutorial

I understand it now. Thank you!

YES!! I sure do miss the F8 boot option..

On older windows 10 installations the recovery partition is at the start of the drive. The issue is that after somes updates over the years the recovery partition has grown in size so it doesn't fit. My PC has 2 recovery partitions. Nowadays windows attach the recovery partition at the end of the C:/ partition. After updates, if the recovery partition increases in size again it will expand towards the C:/ partition. The recovery partition is always after the C:/ partition.

Startup Repair never worked for me either. I accepted that windows sometimes craps its pants so I usually just go for full reinstall, especially if it's not my system. Less effort than trying to figure out what went wrong and fix the damage.

Does bootrec /fixmbr, /fixboot, or /scanos still work in the recovery environment? 100% of the time I try to run them, I never get them to work. It might fixboot, but I get access denied for fixmbr, and it never finds an OS for scanos

Great video tutorial, could you also share nt kernel commands at startup by pressing F10 where we used to use F8

I have 2 recoverypartitions on my system disk i dont know why. Is this a problem if there are 2? What would you do?

Nah the F8 option wasn't argumented for security... It was argumented "Oh we optimized it so much now, that it boots so quickly that there isn't time to register the F8 key." back when the F8 menu disappeared.

Looking forward to the return of the F8 option.. Please let know when you make it avail. Thanks

Question for anyone who can answer it. I want to assign a % to overprovisioning, can I do this to shrink C, and then re enable it (after the unallocated OP partition?) Or even better! Can I move the recovery partition in front of the C drive (just to make sure I can mess with the OP partition down the line if I need to)

DSIM also works using an image from the internet on a Microsoft server, using /online switch right? Sure it's useless if you don't have an internet connection but it's handy.

Very useful video!!!

Hey can some suggest if we can have this recovery drive at start of the disk ?? Like moving c drive forward, and cloning it to the before C drive ??

Just downloaded Windows 10 again with the Micro$ Windows creation utility. The ISO created now has the Install.esd file and not install.wim. I mounted the Windows 10 ISO and then mounted the install.esd with PowerISO and extracted the winre.wim file that way.

Hi Chris if the partitiom is missing how do you find what the guid should be?

Quick comment on the partition type, since it's GPT (GUID Partition Table), that looks to be a GUID format.

During a recent ssd upgrade everything went smooth but this recovery partition thing goes wrong in disk manager its is showing that i do have a recovery partition but while checking on cmd promte it is showing not available, all ways of restoring is too complicated including this so for now i am sticking to full image backup by macrium in case of any catastrophic.

Hey Titus, I tried this and it worked fine. Except on next reboot file system of WinRE partition reverted back to raw and reagentc got disabled. What should I do? This happened twice, each time I tried.

Is there a way to prevent applications from saving window size and position in Windows? I want all apps to open in default window size and position.

hey mate love the video and has fixed a few issues I was having with a few of the other tutorials so thank you. A question though. Everything seems to indicate this has worked however I am unable to see the advanced boot option in control panel | windows update | recovery option and am unable to use the shift restart method to boot into advanced mode. Also when I forced it to do this it was unable to find the recovery image. Would there be a reason for this?

4:17 This long string is just a correctly formatted Universally Unique Identifier (UUID)

Hi man, Do you know if i had a recovery partition that is 2 years old and inreset my PC It will go back to 1909 build for example?

How did I get the recovery in front of the OS. ❓And one in the back. Few weeks ago I swapped my mobo and used the same windows 11 pretty cool how win handles this but decided to go for a new setup... After many months of use it a drill to reinstall clean and paragon15 is always the safeguard to me. Your thumb drive install video is great but settings are prime to get them back. OK how did I get that recovery partition in front and one in the back... MS writes how this layout works but many tech issues this layout as it wash in front of the OS... Oh yeah I have a delay in the boot and my asus mobo is figuring out what to do and even doing a second POST.

Hi Chris, thanks for detail explanation, i have one question as im not good with scripts, just wanted to know how can i check the WinRE status from script and if it is disabled then how to enable it, as it is a pre-requisite for our bitlocker deployment so need to check the status on all devices and if it is not enable then we need to enable it. So cannot login and check on all devices.

Just had to go this on a server, but luckily it was easy rebuild. I didn't see this process, though.

thank you very weel done. btw:would like to setup a realtime recovery ISO to boot to windows 11 / 10?

Its possible to have the partition moved to the beginning of the drive I have done it before.

I had always problem when using software for imaging windows drive on smaller disk, that it removed the recovery partition and it did not work becase of it. Will try next time I will be moving system on smaller disk.

How do you rescue non boot systems. except chkdsk or sfc /scannow. Because sometimes systems don't want to format or etc.

Is there a way to get a new laptop that has a Recovery partition and EFI partition that is hidden and using drive letters that you need like E and F ?

Heyy really thanks to you dude, you help me to solved my problem which did not solved by anyone, And i was very upset and stressed due to this problem,, Thank you sir really😊😊☺☺🙏🏻🙏🏻

Very cool. If I deleted the partition long ago and want to now recreate it... how do I know what to set the ID to that ends with "6ac"? Sorry if I missed it.

Thanks for the tutorial

My SSD has recovery partition as the second partition, which makes changes to its size impossible without cloning the primary partition as a backup, resizing recovery, and then restoring the primary to a smaller size.

I think is to reserve the best and fast space of the disc to the normal use

I tried to reset win 10 and it said it couldn't find the recovery partition... will that effect my windows key??? Actually it's embedded in the BIOS.. so, I guess it's ok.

what if i already have a recovery partition but needed more space? is diskpart neccessary? i notice i cant right click on the recovery partition but i can on the OS/main partition.

WOW . Gracias !!

How to fix this for SFC scan Failure. "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation" . Running windows repair says it can't fix drive. Running DISM at winre admin console prompt says can't run in a PE environment. I trying to fix some SRM???.dll hash errors, and even though they restore from component store, they come back, also dual ownership of various directories? Even when running dism restorehealth at the console admin prompt when logged into windows will not correct any of this. Moreover, just tried a reset PC, and it also says it can't reset the PC.... A second questions is: How to setup a reset PCc partition. When I run it, it seems to know where to go on the drive. The second computer has a PBR Image on a Dell laptop and OEM partitions. How can a recreate at the command prompt the reset pc, pbr image partitions and maybe the OEM partition which I think has win8.1 that came with the PC before the upgrade to win 10 home/pro

Very nice video

What the best Linux distro to try to repair a hard drive?

the install.wim does not exist in my iso file. I tried using the boot.wim and mounting the image. Though still does not come up. Any suggestions?

can you make a tutorial of this with windows pe?

Jolly triumphant video 👍 Awesome channel. 15:51-18:19 --- Wonder why you did not click "See more recovery options" at the bottom? Therein, "System Image Recovery" is located. Kind regards, neighbours and friends.

I'm a senior attending Chris Tech University online. Correct me as required. Presently I have a hobbled Win 10 install that at some point will be upgraded to Win 11 after switching to UEFI. Firstly I need to get a laptop in case anything goes south. To the point what is the advantage to using a Recovery Partition vs a Bootable USB Thumb Drive? Is file recovery part of of the GUI Recover scheme. I run this periodically as it backups all files on the not just the Documents folder.

does reset this pc recreate recovery partition?

When I did the listing on my disk1: which is whre C lives I saw 3 listed as system and 3 Recovery Partitions.

Can someone tells me if this procedure can help to tell windows 8.1 to choose A DIFFERENT RECOVERY PARTITION from an external USB hard drive ?? I made a recovery backup recovery point but in an external USB hard drive... I can see that the recovery point files are there (external USB drive) but no matter how hard I try windows does NOT want to recognize that recovery backup, and I mean I tried everysingle option in the recovery blue boot menu when you restart with SHIFT+RESTART , i wonder if this procedure can help me to enforce windows to recognize that USB recovery drive a the DEFAULT RECOVERY PARTITION, so it may see the recovery points in it (I can see files are there and many gigas), someone has any idea how to do it ??? Thanks in advance

while running this code, i'm getting thie: cre par pri size=700 id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac No usable free extent could be found. It may be that there is insufficient free space to create a partition at the specified size and offset. Specify different size and offset values or don't specify either to create the maximum sized partition. It may be that the disk is partitioned using the MBR disk partitioning format and the disk contains either 4 primary partitions, (no more partitions may be created), or 3 primary partitions and one extended partition, (only logical drives may be created).

How to delete the temp folder extracted the wim file?

This is weird, 0:52 I have the recovery partition at the beginning how do i get it allocated over there?

Win 10 Pro system. No recovery partition on the C boot drive. In Windows\System32\Recovery only the ReAgent.xml file is present. Restart with shift pressed boots into the recovery mode so recovery seems to work without a recovery partition. In the root directory of the C boot drive is also a folder called Recovery widge is not accesseble and is an empty folder according to windows Explorer. But when examening this "empty folder" with a partition manager for instances Mini Partition Wizard all the recovery files are in it. (you can also copy this folder to the desktop and see the content with windows Explorer) Actualy the ReAgent.xml file points to the "empty folder" on the boot drive. I don't know if the boot drive Recovery folder is made when Windows is installed, never have payed attention to it or that it is made after my recently operation from MBR to GPT. Bottomline: check your boot drive for this Recovery folder and if present you don't need a recovery partition.

I don’t find install.wim file. 😢 Downloaded windows 10 iso, mounted. Searching in source folder, but not there (already activate to show system files)

i have disabled password login in my outlook profile so my microsoft account can't be accessed with a pw anymore. but when i boot into my recovery drive i have to enter a password for windows before being able to use any recovery methods. do you know how to disable this? its pissing me off... please dont suggest to not use a microsoft acc.... i got my reasons. thx. edit: TL;DR: i get asked to enter a password that doesn't exist. how do i stop being asked?

I cant shrink the C drive because its „damaged“ it says i should use chdsk

Wow. Windows takes something that should be 4 steps in a GUI - turn off recovery, delete partition, do whatever other disk work you need to, turn recovery back on - and turns it into a journey through powershell Mordor.

Sir, does this affect the Bitlocker? my Bitlocker enable is error, and i believe it does something to do with ReagentC

The problem with the partition at the end of the drive is on Windows Server 2022... If you extend your drive, you cannot extend your C: partition because of the recovery partition.

A question little bit off topic how can I adopt Linux as my main OS for everyday use without being computer science major. I am noob in Linux. I am ver comfortable with windows 11. But want to switch

Where is the link to the shirt? Edit: NVM, I have never seen the Store tab for channels prior to now.

Where's the link for the PowerShell tutorial?

I had this issue I'm trying to retrieve data from it yet couldnt

My, what a conundrum to go through for a recovery partition. And some people have the nerve to call Linux convoluted. 😂

If I remember correctly windows used to put the recovery before system reserve in the beginning of the drive years ago

Recovery partition comes by default with Windows installation. We don't have to do it manually. In which scenario do we have to do it manually?? What am I missing??? Can someone explain??

Had to Install 1809 by clean partition after not getting update. Then that would not update, and got no update to install. Finally got to a system that only had Windows security updates. And did things to try to repair the system the way Microsoft explained. Used Dism, and all that. I got ready to clean wipe the Partition and install 21h2. Suddenly 11/1/2022, Windows Update finds 21h2 and conpletes the update. HP 15, 15ac143wm 2015.

21:05 the file is not missing just they are hidden or you have deleted it to have more space.

If you want to allocate left over hard disk space you don't need to specify size=x

I thought you were going to introduce some other great software tool available on the internet that actually is useful unlike winre. you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned startup repair working 1 percent of the time. I never had success on win10 with the only success being on win 7. Only thing that fixes hair pulling windows issues like missing wifi adapter is system restore, for me atleast. still using win10, hate windows 11 with a passion. hiren's bootcd is also a great winre iso that can be used to copy off your stuff on a failed windows installation

Just boot winpe from a usb drive. Same thing. If you don’t want to create one yourself use hirens boot disk. Easy peasy

tq

what to do if recovery enviroment asks admin pass, how to get rid of it ?

Please make a video on "is kms safe to active window and ms office"

Hey guys, I have been scouting the internet for a long time and I couldn't find an answer to my issue. I can only use recovery if my recovery partition has a letter aka not hidden which should not be the case. The second real problem is that in recovery I cannot see any drive. I have 5 drives in my setup. And for some reason none of them is showing up. So doing recovery is pretty useless for me. I cloned the same system on my nephew's system but he can see his system drive in system restore! I'm really out of ideas and cannot find help anywhere. Any thoughts on what I can try?

System restore by default does not use a lot of space, Hence the reason not to go back to far… you can i crease the size of system restore

two things. Ive seen plenty of systems with that partition at the beginning of a drive. Also, it is a feature that never helped me recover anything.

Oh Dog, this makes me hate Window$ even more. Even their CLI commands have options named by Marketing - restorehealth; Whut de pharque? When someone brings me a Windows machine to sort out it's always just copy the data off, clean install, install the apps, put the data back and "Take this ugly thing away!"

Microsoft didn't make GPT. They use UUID so every filesystem type can have its own ID