Windows 10: Can you confirm advanced recovery options work after upgrading to CU?

I do so much fiddling with my partitions and recovery that my standard Windows Recovery Environment is broke and I can't seem to get it back, but I can't tell you if it was just the upgrade or not. I shift mine to a recovery partition on a second internal hard drive and run Kyhi's Recovery Tools from it.

That habit came from when I did deploy with the Navy and needed to make sure I could restore or reinstall Windows on my laptop without having to rely on external USB storage devices.

 

Solved! by an unexpected means...

Recall I had upgraded from the AU to the CU and could not boot e.g. to Safe Mode - on restarting to try to do so just the PC logo, no activity.

This time I started by wiping all Windows partitions, then clean installing the CU, intending should all be well to restore my system partition from my Macrium partition image.

I noted that trying to boot to Safe Mode via SHIFT + left click restart -> error 0xc0000454 - The boot configuration data for your PC is missing or contains errors. Shock, horror, jaw drops etc...

Curiously, selecting Safe mode via msconfig worked.

I tried again, and noticed this time when deleting partitions using the Win 10 installation sequence, that the disk numbers for my two disks (SSD, SSHD) were reversed compared to when shown by the partition manager. Thus now the SSD was shown as Disk 1. I deleted the partitions. During the installation process I also noted on the restarts there were a couple of short lines briefly shown on a black screen indicating no boot source had been found (not the exact text- it was brief and obscure).

Now I hadn't been used to seeing that.

Restart to safe mode again => 0xc0000454.

======================================
Time to reinstall 1607 - the AU- which had worked.

This time the disk numbers were 0 for the SSD, 1 for the SSHD.
I deleted the Windows partitions on Disk 0, reinstalled. During the reinstallation process there was no message on restarting during the process.

I tested restart to Safe Mode- fine.

I then restored the image of the CU Windows partition and rebooted. All is now well.

Now, that begs at least the following questions.
a. Had I upgraded to the CU with only my SSD in, or clean installed it thus, would all have been well.
b. What is the significance of the disk number reversal between the AU and the CU?
c. Given I now have my recovery, system, EFI partitions created from the 1607 build and my Windows partition from the CU build, and all seems well- is there any discrepancy that is likely to catch me out?

(Note: when I first rebooted this concoction, it (unsurprisingly) did an automatic repair- which succeeded).

Has anyone else noted their system disk not being designated as Disk 0 by a CU build on installation?

 

@dalchina

should not make any difference with or without.

Have never seen it before. Perhaps you want to make sure if you have an up to date BIOS or re-flash it in case it is corrupted.. Disk # is based on what port on the MB where you connect the disk to, that's why we often advise people to make the boot disk as disk 0 by swapping the cables.

The EFI disk partition layout for 1709 is now:
500MB (Recovery), 100MB (EFI System), 100MB (MSR) and C
For MBR:
550MB (System reserved) and C.

As long as you have the correct disk layout, you should be fine.

 

Hi, thanks for confirming the disk number swap is unexpected. Being a laptop I have no control over the connections, of course.

But there does seem to be consistency between using the two builds.

I'll check with the supplier and about the BIOS. At present, seems fine.