Windows 10: Recovery Disk Options

I am interested in knowing what a recovery disk does. Windows 10 requires a 8GB USB stick to create a recovery disk.


Is this disk just for rebooting the system or does it also contain the applications I have installed on my laptop?

:)

 

Recovery Disks

Hi Ron,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community. Appreciate your interest in using Windows 10.

In order to create a recovery disk, follow the steps below:

• Type “Recovery” in search box and press Enter.
• Select the option to create a recovery disc and follow the prompts to create a recovery disc.

Hope the information is helpful. Feel free to
write to us for any other assistance with Windows, we’ll be glad to assist you.

 

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.

 

XP disk versus Laptop Recovery Disk?

Recovery disks are just OEM copies of XP disks. Ie, they can have things such as the companys logo within the files.

If you got a normal XP disk you cant use it. The only way your dads copy of XP will activate is if your normal XP copy is OEM, unless you use the recovery disk.

I always use the recovery disks. Works just like a normal copy *Smile . Plus with the recovery disks you dont need the serial key as I *think* its embedded into the files on the disk. Just need to activate windows once on the net *Wink .