Windows 10: Find Reset Recovery Image Location in Windows 10

Thanks for replies. I learned much.

In that case, giving recovery partition a clean install.wim file will be more safe, am i right? Cuz system will be install directly from install.wim file which is about 3 GB of size.

 

That's what I do. Install.wim copied from the ISO downloaded from Tech Bench. After you copy the install.wim file to the desired location you have to set up reagentc to use it with:

REAGENTC.EXE /setosimage /path r:\Recovery /index 2

The path in red is to the folder containing the install.wim file. Index 2 is Home. Use Index 1 for Pro. Also the recovery partition that you copy the install.wim file to only has to have a temporary drive letter to run the command. After the osimage location is set in reagentc (verify with reagentc /info), you can remove the drive letter from the recovery partition.

Another advantage to having the install.wim file on the hard drive is that you can use the dism restorehealth command and point it to the install.wim file for the source (but your recovery partition has to have a drive letter for that).

 

And install.wim file should be located out of the system drive, right?

 

Yes. I have a laptop with legacy bios and MBR hard drive. I have a custom system reserved partition that has the boot files, WindowsRE, recovery image (actually the entire Windows install ISO), a Macrium Reflect rescue ISO, and a MiniTool Partition Tool Wizard ISO. I use EasyBCD to set up a boot menu to boot into any of those (as well as normal Windows, of course). But that is really only possible with legacy bios. (I like to play around a lot with different Windows installations).

If you have a recovery partition already with WindowsRE on it, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to resize partitions to make room in the recovery partition to hold the install.wim file.

Having the install.wim file is absolutely NOT necessary, it's just a personal preference and probably 90% of users will get along just fine without it.

 

I may want to resize the the System Reserved partition which holds Winre.wim and put install.wim there.
But how will i manage to show install.wim file to REAGENTC.exe, that partition is not accessable from Windows.

 

You have to assign it a drive letter. What do your disk partitions look like?
Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

Wow, i didn't know that we can do that. *Smile
Thank you.

 

As soon as I finish messing with the system reserved partition, I remove the drive letter again to minimize the chances of me or something else messing with it when I don't want to.

 

Totally.
Give a letter, add install.wim to REAGENTC, remove letter and viola.

 

Question on the Install.wim file, if you don't want to add it to your recovery partition. Can't you just add it to like a 2nd drive on your computer?? Like place it on a D-drive in a folder?? And if you can, would you still need to use the Reagentc command?? Just wondering ??

 

I don't see why it wouldn't work from a 2nd drive. In order to access the install.wim file to do a clean "system reset" from the recovery environment you have to point reagentc to it. reagentc means "recovery environment agent" not sure what the c is for, maybe control or configuration? I'll have to try it on my desktop computer that has multiple hard drives. [and now, OldMike, a new SSD as the system drive - you will be happy to know! I'm slowly converting *Smile]

 

*Thumbs*Thumbs Well its about time!!! You are going to LOVE your SSD drive!!!! Yesssssss!!!! *Smile

 

I'm putting a couple of screen shots in here even though I've used them before. "Recycle, Reuse." *Smile

Based on what I'm reading, it doesn't appear that in the case of the deployment I've performed that the "Recovery" folder is even close to where it SHOULD be, because I think it should be on Partition 01 "WinRE" or 05 "Image" (Not sure because I'm still not sure if people (Brink & isimiskullan) are saying that's where windows put the RE Tools instead of seeing the RE Tools I already put on Partition 01 before installing, or that's where Windows is saving image data instead of partition 05 that I set aside an entire terabyte for.)

For Example: OldMike ; are you saying I need to reinstall RE? If so, how will it give a drive letter if the partitions are already designated as " Recovery " partitions?

It's better if I just let the pictures explain the rest because I did a cheap flow chart to better explain where I'm at on this too.

The least I can tell is that for whatever reason, Windows 10 deployments are a little different than other versions of Windows when it comes to putting in a WinRE partition as Microsoft recommends and in the past my end users have preferred, so to say the least, things are not going status quo in that it looks like some paths will have to be redefined on my end. I just haven't had this much difficulty in having Windows find RE in the right spot before.

...and here are the pics... I hope they help others, but also am looking for help from those who've solved this before with Windows 10. Thanks.

Issue # 01 - 02 :





Issue # 02 - 02 : (Brink, Thanks for pointing out that there's a recovery folder because I wasn't thinking to look for it in C)





Looking forward to getting through this so that Windows, Win RE, and Imaging all have the right information going to where it's supposed to.

Looking forward to the responses.

 

It would really help to see a full screenshot of disk management (make sure to widen the columns so we can read all the info in the columns:
Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of - Windows 10 Forums

 

No problem NavyLCDR. The WinRE partition size I've historically used is 8GB just in case additional tools are required. I've only had to integrate additional tools a few times since the year 2000, so no extra tools in the partition because the size is a "just in case" measure.

Screen shot as requested ( had to obscure the C Drive name for confidentiality purposes, but that's the one with the full install of Windows along with all of the required partitions before it "MSR/EFI" , "System" , then "C Windows" )...

The WinPE partition at the end works peachy, and is one of the gold standards of the way I deploy drives provided everything else I do is how the OS requires/recommends/both. *Biggrin

Please pardon the High Contrast. My vision is terrible.

Top Pane:





Bottom Pane: