Windows 10: Clean install with WIMBoot & delete recovery partition

Windows 10 has never used wimboot and no oem has never used it as far as I know. Some enthusiatst may have created a customised version, but oems would not have done so as the RTM release version with compactOS was designed for tablets.

OP is confusing a compressed OS with wimboot.

In compressed mode, Windows 10 simply uses shortcuts (like placeholders) for OS files, and extracts them from the winsnsx folder and decompresses them on the fly, rather than having all the decompressed files on the drive, saving several GBs of space.

Wimboot was similar, but used a compressed copy of the OS in an external partition (doubling up as a recovery partition) , but still had the winsnsx folders (ie 2 copies of OS in effect). This is main reason why W10 is smaller than W8.1.

It is clear from OP post, previous owner must have (most likely) upgraded from 8.1 leaving wimboot partitition in place.

It is possible though that the oem decided to put an oem recovery partition on it (including special drivers and maybe even some bloatware), and OP is interpreting the recovery partition as a wimboot partition.

So long as OP exports all drivers first and makes an image backup, it will be ok to wipe this partition, and clean install.

 

To solve any mystery -

one could assign a drive letter to the recovery partition using diskpart.
then use dism to get the info from and about the recovery install.wim

 

All

Thanks for the comprehensive replies. I think that the original configuration of this computer had Win8.1 installed, and the WIMBoot warning in the user guide possibly refers to that?
I am not sure how to tell if WIMBoot is still applicable - see Disk Management attached.

Since then the Windows 10 free upgrade was installed, some time ago perhaps.
I say this because under the recovery section, I don't see an option to roll back to Win8.1 so its past the 30 days.
(all I have is "reset this PC" & "Advanced startup").

So it looks like Win10 is well embedded an I wont be able to create a Win8.1 image.

My disk management screenshot is attached.
You can see the 1gb recovery partition.

So, on this basis, do you think that:

• if I backup the drivers
• take an image of the current Win10 configuration,
• do a clean Win10 installation of USB
• and delete all recovery partitions I should be ok?

Or does Win10 needs this for the compression to save space?

 

Yes, I checked disk management and C: has Wim Boot under the status (sorry, I chopped that part of the screenshot in my image in my last post)

 

After all this discussion, there is no wimboot recovery partition here!

The recovery partition here is the standard W10 recovery partition used if you want to reset your pc.

I recommend you leave it alone.

You do not need to reinstall Windows to delete old user profile. Just create a new admin account, remove old one, and delete old files.

 

You have the Recovery Partition 1000MB - so not a wimboot PC

Answered and Solved..

 

It's curious that the Disk Management says WIMBoot when (as the others pointed out) there isn't a partition big enough.
What happens if you run the other command from the Technet link?

If the output looks like this, the PC is configured to start from a WIM file:
Code: 0 {32E66EF3-3CE0-4A04-8F17-25B2929407D1} 00000001 \\?\Volume{8f4fbaed-dc86-4f7d-803d-55611b59fe39}\windows images\install.wim:1[/quote] If the output looks like this, the PC is not configured to start from a WIM file:
Code: WofEnumEntries failed: Error: Incorrect function[/quote] [/quote]

 

Except that every standard recovery partition I have ever seen Windows 10 create has been either 450 or 500 MB in size, not 1 GB.

I fully agree that the recovery partition containing the Windows 8/8.1 factory image is already gone on this tablet.

 

A wimboot partition would be at least 5GB. I have seen some odd sized recovery partitions when doing an upgrade. For clean installs, they are normally 450 MB as you say.

 

The Recovery partition in question is the WinRE partition.. OEM's can set any size of EFI and WinRE partition..

You are referring to a standard clean install recommended partitions sizes..

there are many reasons why the WinRE recovery partition would need to be larger...

500MB of touch friendly drivers would increase the winre.wim and recovery partition size..

 

hi there. i know this is a old post. but maybe anyone can help me because i have about the same problem.... a have a airis winpad 81w tablet... i;being so stupid; went and made a clean install of windows 10, and erase all of the partitions; to gain so me more space. and make the windows to create all the partitions. all good. but the windows cant complete the install on the last part. i them go to diskpart to see the partititons and i have 2 partitions whit "hidden" attibutes- sistem and recovery partitions. i think that the problem. if the partitions are hidden, are windows able to write on them?