Windows 10: Clean install with WIMBoot & delete recovery partition

I bought a 2nd hand Lenovo Idea pad 100s netbook. It has 32gb eMMC storage. It has WIMBoot.

It came with Win10 but has the old owners profile so I want to reinstall a clean copy of windows 10 from usb that I downloaded from Microsoft.

2 questions:
1. Can I delete the recovery partition when I do this? I don't need wasted space and can always reinstall off usb in future. There is warning about doing this with EMMC drives, see below...

My concern is that the user guide has a big warning :

Do not delete or modify the Recovery Partition on a WIMBoot-enabled computer.
If the Recovery Partition is deleted or modified, you may not be able to restore Windows to the factory status. For computer models on which WIMBoot is enabled, deleting the Recovery Partition may cause Windows to fail to start.

2. Do I need to do anything special when installing a clean copy on a WIMBoot drive?

Thanks

:)

 

Enabling reset factory windows 10 with downgrading to original win 8.1(after 30day limit)

I recently have upgrade my Asus T200 tablet win 8.1 to windows 10

cause the windows.old folder is deleted I can't use the easy Go back to previous OS 8.1 option in windows 10

nor that I have a backup or image of my win 8.1

0.I plan to install a WIMBoot win 8.1 32bit so that reset factory of my tablet may work again

1.the only thing I have is the 8 GB recovery partition of my tablet which is not shown in my compter when windows is running.

I have used reset factory in win 8.1 many times but since I have upgraded to windows 10 that option is not available

0.my only clue is that if I Install a wimboot version of windows 8.1 on the drive C ,the recovery option may work again.

2.previously I tried installing win 8.1 on drive C bot the recovery option in startup of my ASUS T200 failed.so I wonder if a wimboot version of windows 8.1 do the trick.

0.....this trick may apply to other tablets that their recovery partition is useless after upgrading to windows 10.(if it works!!!)

3.so does anybody know why my recovery option didn't work with installing a normal win 8.1 (not a WIMBoot)

4.and is it possible that upgrading to windows 10 affected the recovery partition in anyway like deleting some files from it?

(normally acessing that partition from my computer is not possible without labeling and formatting that recovery partition)

and last question.

5.strangely when I go from windows 10 installation USB in customize option

drivers are shown as a 100 MB and a

300 MB and 20 GB drive C plus 8 GB recovery partition.it shows that 8GB recovery partition is encrypted and has 500 MB used apace.

5.x.seriously is the image of my factory win 8.1 is just 500 MB or is it just because the drive is encrypted!

I thought something like a 7GB image file is in that recovery partition that when ever I do a factory reset it is used.

Enabling reset factory windows 10 with downgrading to original OS 8.1(after 30day limit)

I recently have upgrade my Asus T200 tablet win 8.1 to windows 10

cause the windows.old folder is deleted I can't use the easy Go back to previous OS 8.1 option in windows 10

nor that I have a backup or image of my win 8.1

0.I plan to install a WIMBoot win 8.1 32bit so that reset factory of my tablet may work again

1.the only thing I have is the 8 GB recovery partition of my tablet which is not shown in my compter when windows is running.

I have used reset factory in win 8.1 many times but since I have upgraded to windows 10 that option is not available

0.my only clue is that if I Install a wimboot version of windows 8.1 on the drive C ,the recovery option may work again.

2.previously I tried installing win 8.1 on drive C bot the recovery option in startup of my ASUS T200 failed.so I wonder if a wimboot version of windows 8.1 do the trick.

0.....this trick may apply to other tablets that their recovery partition is useless after upgrading to windows 10.(if it works!!!)

3.so does anybody know why my recovery option didn't work with installing a normal win 8.1 (not a WIMBoot)

4.and is it possible that upgrading to windows 10 affected the recovery partition in anyway like deleting some files from it?

(normally acessing that partition from my computer is not possible without labeling and formatting that recovery partition)

and last question.

5.strangely when I go from windows 10 installation USB in customize option

drivers are shown as a 100 MB and a

300 MB and 20 GB drive C plus 8 GB recovery partition.it shows that 8GB recovery partition is encrypted and has 500 MB used apace.

5.x.seriously is the image of my factory win 8.1 is just 500 MB or is it just because the drive is encrypted!

I thought something like a 7GB image file is in that recovery partition that when ever I do a factory reset it is used.

 

How do you reinstall windows on a windows tablet that uses wimboot?

Resetting this tablet doesn't work, because even if i do that i still have random corruption problems, i want to delete the operating system and reinstall from usb , i just need help to get it reinstalled with wimboot compression. Isn't windows 10 wimboot
different from windows 8.1 wimboot by that you don't need a separate partition for the wimboot images? So can i reinstall windows 10 from a usb flash drive and not need a special wimboot version?

 

Use Macrium Reflect Free to make an image of the existing EMMC and a rescue USB flash drive. Then you are 99% guaranteed to be able to restore it if you need to.

I would also suggest creating a folder on a USB flash drive or SD card - I call mine DriversW10. Then in an elevated "run as administrator" command prompt run:

DISM.exe /Online /Export-Driver /Destination:\DriversW10

The path in red will be to the folder you create. This will save all the non-Microsoft drivers for the hardware that you might need to manually install through device manager in control panel later.

 

Thanks for the reply.

So are you saying after I create the image and driver backup I should then be ok to delete the recovery partition, or not?

My understanding of wimboot (from what I read) is that it is needed for install files in which case I would have to keep it, assuming win10 runs off that.

What confused me is this was upgraded from win7 or win8 so not sure if upon upgrade the recovery partition then also got updated?

 

All wimboot means is that Windows is stored in a compressed state in the eMMC memory. It does not require the recovery partition to load and run. The recovery partition is only required to restore the tablet back to factory software, which will be Windows 7 or 8.

This is my experience with clean install of Windows 10 on my Nextbook 32GB tablet:

Came with Windows 8.1 Bing. First thing I did was make an image of the entire eMMC with Macrium Reflect to a USB flash drive. Then I exported the drivers to a micro SD Card. I upgraded to Windows 10 to get the free upgrade and digital entitlement.

Then I boot from a Windows 10 install USB flash drive, selected custom install, wiped all the existing partitions from the eMMC memory and clean installed to the unallocated space.

In device manager were a whole bunch of "unknown devices". Right click each one, select upgrade drivers, search my computer, point it to the saved drivers folder on the microSD card, loaded all the drivers for each unknown device.

Screen would not auto rotate. Discovered there was an accelerometer that needed a device driver that was nowhere in device manager, not even "unknown device". So I manually installed that driver. Screen rotated but was either 90 or 180 degrees off. Discovered I needed a registry entry to correct it. So, I made an image of the Windows 10, restored the image of the Windows 8.1/Bing, exported the registry entry that I needed. Restored the image of Windows 10 and imported the registry entry and all was right with the world again.

When I wiped the eMMC memory before the Windows 10 clean install, the factory recovery partition went with it. But I still have it in the image stored on my external backup drive.

 

Before you do anything, it is a really good idea to create a "barebones" usb recovery drive in Windows 8.1 as well as the Macrium image (just in case Macrium fails). You cannot use standard MS iso to recover without getting a new licence.

If you create this drive, you can safely delete recovery partition and free up limited space.

To do this

Control Panel, Recovery, Create Recovery Drive, and click checkbox to copy recovery partition.

As NavyLCDR says, export drivers as well - tablets use some special drivers not in standard MS iso.

This is a good tool that exports the 3rd party drivers.

http://woshub.com/how-to-export-driv...indows-8-1-u1/

I actually recpommend you upgrade rather than clean install first, as it is easier.

One issue you may get with a clean install is that the touch drivers rarely work during the install, so you need a usb hib, usb mouse and usb keyboard as well as the usb stick, and perhaps an otg cable to connect hub to tablet.

 

Sorry, but this is totally wrong assumption.....

Wimboot uses the Recovery Partition and Recovery Image (Install.wim) as its file source....
The only thing on the C drive are the pointers to the files contained within the install.wim..
So on a Wimboot PC removing the Recovery, Removes the OS..

Windows 10 does not support wimboot and with a 32 GB drive not really required either...

Without Question - do as suggested above about the drivers

then

YES, You can remove every partition and Clean Install windows 10 .
As that tablet is no longer using wimboot anyway, since the win10 upgrade

 

What happened when the wimboot PC got upgraded to windows 10, is the pointer files on C where copied into windows.old
and then the NEW OS was installed on C..

thus knocking out the prior wimboot OS and the recovery partition is no longer needed or used as a reference point..

 

This is my tablet:








Clearly Windows 10 does not require a recovery partition to run the OS in compressed state.

 

...because Windows 10 doesn't use WIMBoot any more.
It's only Windows 8.1 that uses WIMBoot - OS compression in Windows 10 uses a different technique.
But deleting the recovery partition on a Windows 8.1 device with WIMBoot would be a problem.

Edit: I'd forgotten that some OEMs might still be using it while deprecated. A more correct version would be:

...because Windows 10 doesn't support the use of WIMBoot any more.
(From here:

It's only Windows 8.1 (and apparently some OEMs that are using it on a deprecated basis) that uses WIMBoot - OS compression in Windows 10 uses a different technique.
But deleting the recovery partition on any device with WIMBoot would be a problem.

 

The latter point is crucial - that is why any 8.1+Bing user should backup OS to a recovery usb drive BEFORE upgrading and also recommend an image backup AS WELL (not instead of).

 

Keep in mind - from the OP:

 

Thanks for that - I'd not spotted that the OP mentioned the PC was using WIMBoot with Windows 10.

It's deprecated and seemingly not supported in Windows 10, but I guess some OEMs may have deployed it in the early days. I've edited my earlier post accordingly.

It may be interesting to check if the OP's device actually is using WIMBoot:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../dn631790.aspx
The easiest way is using Disk Management - for instance we can see from your earlier disk management screenshot that clean installing Win10 doesn't result in a WIMBoot installation, as I'd expect because it's using the newer way to compress the OS.

 

So, what have you figured out here..

Wimboot OS and compressed OS = are not the same thing...

Wimboot is 8.1 feature and compressed is 10 feature..

So, back to the OP's two questions - and your replies are ??