Windows 10: My windows recovery environment options don't work

Recently, I had to perform a clean install of windows 11 on my HP pavilion 13 laptop because it encountered an unmountable boot volume error.I used a USB to perform this install, and everything went mostly smoothly. I had to download a driver from HP in order to view my drives, but it all worked out in the end.Now my PC is running fine, but I've discovered that my windows recovery options are no longer functioning.For one, previously when I entered the recovery environment and tried to change something, it would require my bitlocker. But now, I get a Choose keyboard layout screen once I ente

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Missing Recovery Environment

Hi Alan,

Here is a link containing several useful suggestions to help you recover Windows 10. Since the error message that you got tells you to insert your Windows installation or recovery media. We suggest the perform the steps listed under
Use a recovery drive to restore or reset your PC or you can also follow the steps under
Use installation media to restore or reset your PC. Please see the link below for more details:

Recovery options in Windows 10.

Regards.

 

How does Windows boot to advanced recovery option e.g. command prompt?

- that gives me a 454 'Unexpected error' This tells me that the BCD is partially corrupted.

The commands: shutdown.exe /r /o /f /t 00
or: %SystemRoot%\System32\Cmd.exe /c reagentc /boottore&shutdown /r /f /t 00
should boot into Recovery if everything is configured correctly.
FYI, If Windows is configured correctly:

1. If Reagentc is disabled, you still can get into Recovery but with limited options.
2. If Reagentc is enabled, you'll get all options.
3. If you boot Windows using Recovery USB stick, You'll get into Recovery with couple of options missing.

Here's my suggestion if you want to try:
OPTION 1: Will save the trouble of re-install Windows.

1. Download the image of my first 3 partitions (450MB Recovery, 100 MB EFI partition, and 16MB unformatted primary)
   EFI_Boot-00-00.7z - Google Drive
2. Run Macrium and restore the image from step 1, overwriting your existing 1st three partitions, leaving C alone.
3. Delete the 490MB Recovery partition.
4. From Macrium, run fix boot problems.
5. Reboot. Open Admin command prompt then run Reagentc /info to make sure that it is enabled. If not, enable it.
   if failed to enable, reboot and try again.

OPTION 2: Assuming you've already had Windows backup with Macrium.

1. Wipe out the first 5 parttiions. (450MB, 100MB, 16MB, C Drive, 480MB)
2. Fresh install Windows 10
3. Restore C drive from backup image, run fix boot problems
4. repeat step 5 from OPTION 1 above.

 

Unable to access Windows Recovery Environment normally

Some entries in the bcd for the recovery environment is either corrupted or missing. To fix the problem, you;d need to rebuild the entries for the recovery environment.
Here's the steps:

1. Turn on folder options to show hidden files/folders. Open admin command then type: reagentc /disable
   - This will move 2 files from the recovery partition reagent.xml and winre.wim to C:\windows\system32\recovery
2. If you have the Windows 10 ISO, double click on it to mount to a virtual cd/dvd else If you have the Windows 10 USB then navigate to Sources folder and look for install.esd or install.wim.
3. Use 7-ZIP to open install.esd or install.wim, select and index. eg. 6 then navigate to Windows\system32\recovery. You'd see 2 files: Winre.wim and reagent.xml.
4. Remove everything from C:\windows\system32\recovery (ie. your current winre.win and reagent.xml)
5. Copy the new winre.wim and reagent.xml from the install.esd/install.wim to C:\windows\system32\Recovery
6. From admin command, type: ReAgentc /enable

Reboot to recovery. This will also fix the problem with shutdown /r /o