Windows 10: reagntc Command Shows Wrong Win RE Partition after Windows 10 Upgrade

I just upgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 and my system disk map looks like this:





The reagentc / info command shows this:




The Win RE location is partition 5 which dates from 2104 (W8.1):



But the Windows 10 RE files are on partition 4:




It seems the wrong partition is selected for the Windows 10 RE files. Why has the Windows 10 installation done this and how do I ensure the correct Windows 10 Win RE partition is selected?

:)

 

Windows 10 & Too many Recovery partitions

A number of discussions have been started on the many Recovery partitions with Windows 10.

I have installed a number of computers with Windows 10, some of them through upgrade from Windows 7.

All the product keys for these Win 7/10 OS were/are of course known to me because I purchased the product keys.

All the installations show the System Reserved partition and the Windows 10 OS partition, nothing else. There are no UEFI partitions.

When I want to re-install Win 10 from scratch it is no problem, even when I deleted all the partitions during the process of (re-)installing Win 10. I do not even have to tell the system the product key because after finalizing the installation, Windows
10 tells me it is activated.

When you see a Recovery partition, then in my opinion, it is there because the operating system came pre-installed and without a CD/DVD (Recovery disk). The Recovery partition is then needed in case of crash.

I have a laptop that came with Windows 8 and that I upgraded to Windows 10. It has 4 Recovery partitions and that puzzles me. I could understand 3: one for Win 8, one for Win 8.1 and one for Win 10. But the fourth?

One day I will re-install Win 10 and not through the Recovery partition (whichever of the 4 it is). I will delete all partitions except the UEFI partition as I am not sure what the consequences are after deleting... It is said that it is needed for booting
the computer correctly (but I thought that is what the BIOS was for).

Again, as several questions regarding multiple Recovery partitions have been raised in several threads, it would be nice if someone with knowledge would explain the origin of multiple Recovery partitions and if they are all needed.

Willy

 

New Dell with Windows 10 - can't create recovery USB - can someone help?

Further investigation seems to indicate the following;

1. If you do a clean install of win 10 (meaning wiping the drive and installing), a hidden partition

of 450mg is created. Disk Management shows this partition as "Healthy Recovery". Again,

this partition is hidden.

2. If you do an upgrade of win 7 or win 8, 8.1 and you had no hidden recovery partition

created by Microsoft, you will not get one when you upgrade to Win 10.

I could be wrong, but you can't create a Recovery Drive if you don't have a hidden healthy 450mb

or larger recovery partition.

Can anyone confirm this?

 

REAgentC Command-Line Options

reagentc /setreimage /path F:\Recovery

You will have to assign a drive letter to the recovery partition and use that drive letter in the command above. That resets the location of the WindowsRE file.

 

If you can't assign a driver letter, The Recovery part might be a hidden partition.

Command Prompt (Admin)
diskpart
sel dis 0
lis par
sel par 4
det par
det vol
Post the output from diskpart

 

You have a hidden partition > so verify partition layout..

diskpart
select disk 0
list partition

if sure win10 recovery is on disk 0 partition 4 then

reagentc /disable
Reagentc /setreimage /path \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE
reagentc /enable

reagentc /info

 

Yeah, I forgot about the MSR and asked only for det(ails) on par(tiition) 4

Thanks for adding what Steve C needs to do after verifying the schema.

par1: 300MB Recovery
par2: EFI
par3: MSR - hidden
par4: System c:
par5: 450 MB Recovery
par6: 450 MB Recovery

Steve C can probably eliminate the 300MB Recovery (par1) and the last 450 MB Recovery partitions (par6)
They're only 750 MB in total - so you can leave them with no harm.

Any thoughts Kyhi?

Don't take any action Steve - there's not enough information about the partitions yet.

 

or he can copy winre.wim from partition win10 re to partition 1
and delete the last 2 partitions and gain the space back into c

as PC appears to have been upgraded twice to win10 - thus the 2 extra partitions...

 

Thanks to Kyhi & Slartybart for spotting I was counting partitions based on Disk Management and missed the hidden partition. The original installation was Windows 8 Pro then upgraded to Windows 8.1 Pro and to Windows 10 Pro yesterday. The full partition layouts from Diskpart and Partition Wizard are shown below:






Here are the partition contents of Disk 0 (Diskpart) / Disk 1 (Partition Wizard):

Partition 1:



Partition 5:



Partition 6:



It looks like Windows 10 is using the right recovery partition - Partition 5 according to reagentc /info.

Was Partition 1 which now has no Win RE files the original Windows 8 recovery partition?
The idea of moving Win RE files to the first partition is attractive but I don't seem to have enough space since I only have 162Mb free. How would I do this without trashing my PC?

An easier fix would be to delete partition 6 (from Windows 8,1?), move Partition 5 to the end of the disk then expand current Partition 4 [Drive C] to use the empty space.

 

Seems like a lot of work to reclaim 450 MB of disk space at the end of the drive.

I would relabel part 1 to Kaspersky Rescue, just to avoid any ambiguity
Then delete part 6, leaving the 450 MB unallocated

Who knows what the next Windows drop (Redstone 1 - 29 July 2016) is going to do? It might change the disk schema once again !

 

Good point - I'll decide what to do after 29 July. Wasn't partition 1 created by Windows 8 and Kaspersky Anti-Virus has added more files to that partition?

 

@Kyhi
This won't work since partition 1 is 300MB and the WinRe.wim in partition 6 alone is 335.45MB.

@steve C
FYI, Each time you upgrade or perform in place repair, another 450MB Recovery will be created. The WinRE.wim for Win8.1 is removed from the 300MB partition and replaced by a new WinRE.wim for Win10 in the new 450MB partition.

For Win 8.1 the GPT partition scheme is: 300MB Recovery, 100MB EFI System, 128MB MSR and C drive.
For Win10, the GPT partition scheme is: 450MB Recovery, 100MB EFI System, 16MB MSR and C drive.

If you wish, you can re-align the partition scheme as shown in this post:
GPT disk conversion for both data drives and C drive - Windows 10 Forums

 

It seems we need a simple tool to remove these proliferating partitions. Removing the left over Partition 1 (300MB) hardly seems the effort but it seems fairly straightforward to sort out Partitions 5 & 6

 

Be careful to remove the 300MB partition. Windows will not boot, you'd need to run starup repair.

 

Yes, I'll be leaving Partition 1 alone!