Windows 10: Recovery Environment (WinRe) question

Discus and support Recovery Environment (WinRe) question in Windows 10 Support to solve the problem; My PC is running fine but I was curious to see what options are available in the Recovery environment on my PC as it isnt something Ive ever had to... Discussion in 'Windows 10 Support' started by sportsfan148, Sep 21, 2020.

  1. Recovery Environment (WinRe) question


    My PC is running fine but I was curious to see what options are available in the Recovery environment on my PC as it isnt something Ive ever had to use.
    So I held down the shift key and restarted my PC which took me into the Recovery Environment. I selected startup settings to see what options were in there (Safe mode, Safe Mode with networking etc).
    I was reading through all the various options without selecting anything and my PC powered down. I was on the screen for a minute or so before my PC switched itself off. I thought this was a bit strange so I repeated the same procedure a couple of times. Again my PC switched itself off after a short period of time. Is this normal behaviour? When I tested to see if it was working correctly if I was to make a selection I selected the Safe Mode option and my PC booted into safe mode as expected. I know this seems a bit of a weird question but I wanted to see if others are seeing this too?

    :)
     
    sportsfan148, Sep 21, 2020
    #1
  2. TimeLoss Win User

    Questions regarding the Windows Recovery Environment partition (WinRe)

    I phrased that wrong, I meant to say that I took everything off the Hard Drive until around 50GB of space was used then copied it over to the 250GB mSATA SDD. Probably too much detail for the purposes of these questions. The new drive boots into Windows fine, but the "WINRE" partition was not transferred over.

    Here are the new mSATA SDD partitions:

    Recovery Environment (WinRe) question [​IMG]


    And here are the old Hard Drive partitions:

    Recovery Environment (WinRe) question [​IMG]


    On the old Hard Drive, the 872mb "Recovery" partition on the right is probably just left over from when this laptop used Windows 8. But the 300mb "WINRE" partition on the left is what is used by Windows 10's Windows Recovery Environment for certain restore and troubleshooting functionality.

    Edit: I should probably further clarify that I am concerned about the long-term health of my laptop without the WinRe partition, as I tend to keep computers for a very long time.

    Edit: Edit: Oops, I am still saying it wrong. I meant to say that only 50GB of space was USED, not LEFT
     
    TimeLoss, Sep 21, 2020
    #2
  3. TimeLoss Win User
    Questions regarding the Windows Recovery Environment partition (WinRe)

    These questions may be plainly obvious to many. However before now I have never copied partitions to a new drive and am approaching all of this from a position of ignorance.

    I recently installed a 250gb mSata SSD into my laptop meant to boot the operating system while the preexisting hard drive will be used handle the bulk of the laptop's storage.

    I reduced my Hard Drive down to 50gb and then made a system image backup as a precaution in case things went wrong. When this was done I used a program to copy the drive to the mSata. Afterwords I removed the older Hard Drive with the intentions of reformatting it before putting it back into the laptop. I have yet to reformat the older Hard Drive.

    Everything boots fine on the new drive, however the new drive is missing the "WinRe" Windows Recovery Environment partition which is used to provide certain recovery and troubleshooting options for Windows 10. Without that partition I cannot access the recovery environment or make a recovery drive. Yet nothing short of a full Windows reinstall seems to be able to recreate the WinRe partition.

    I have an old 2013 version of Office provided by my College that I am trying to keep and am not keen on reinstalling the OS.

    So my questions are as follows:
    Is there anyway to restore the WinRe partition in a current Windows 10 installation without a full reinstall?

    What are any potential future problems if Windows 10 does not have access to the WinRe partition?

    Is there an adequate replacement with the same functionality as the Windows Recovery Environment if I am unable to restore it?
     
    TimeLoss, Sep 21, 2020
    #3
  4. dalchina Win User

    Recovery Environment (WinRe) question

    Questions regarding the Windows Recovery Environment partition (WinRe)

    The integrity of your OS as regards booting normally isn't in question.
    Without the Recovery partition you lack the option to boot to Safe Mode and similar modes.

    Recovery Environment (WinRe) question [​IMG]


    The other recovery function you lose is so-called automatic repair- Windows attempt to fix things when it detects you can't boot. In practice this rarely seems to help.

    You also lack the convenience of being able to boot to
    - Startup repair
    - Command Prompt
    - System Restore


    However
    you can still boot from a Win 10 install medium and thus access the last 3.
     
    dalchina, Sep 21, 2020
    #4
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Recovery Environment (WinRe) question

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