Windows 10: Recovery Drive or Installation Drive?

I'm working on an Dell AIO that I cannot force into Recovery Mode, and have always used Installation Disks to boot into Repair Console or to get into Advanced Options etc. I'm guessing that the Recovery Drive is a little Safer to do this with?

Thanks,

:)

 

Windows 10 Recovery drive and/or Installation media

Hello,

Background:

I have been simply unable to obtain or create any form of emergency recovery options for my windows 10 OS.

It was originally a windows 7 OEM licence that came with a cyberpower PC system in 2011.

I upgraded it using the free windows 10 offer some time ago.

This system is starting to age and I am really concerned about not having recovery media / any other means should the system be unable to start the OS. Yes, I do have Acronis backup images, but using these is a bit extreme in most cases when I could just
use the recovery options.

The only hardware I've upgraded was a graphics card and the OS SSD to an improved SSD, both of these occured after the win7>10 upgrade.

--I have attempted the following--

Windows 10 "Create a recovery drive" feature :

Immediately gives, Cannot create a recovery drive on this PC, cannot find necessary files.

reagentc.exe methods found on other community posts - but winre.wim does not exist anywhere on this computer. I do not know what happened to it. (??) There are some older units on an external backup disk from 2013 which were probably from Windows 7.

Windows media creation tool (MediaCreationTool.exe)

Before, this would croak immediately after the EULA no matter what I did. Tried it again today and it got further, but still croaked after a long download and attempt to install onto a USB device.

Error was: "There was a problem running this tool" "We're not sure what happened, but we're unable to run this tool on your PC, if you continue experiencing problems, ref. the error code 0x80070013 - 0xA001A"

About 3.8 GB of data was written to the USB before the process quit.

I have successfully created an emergency repair Disk, when testing it... for some reason it will not load mouse drivers (or smth) and has no keyboard controls that I know of. I cannot proceed beyond a certain point because the controls are not functioning.

The system is perfectly fine otherwise.

I use Norton Antivirus - if that may have something to do with it.

Something seems deadset against letting me have something to recover windows.

Help!

 

Windows 10 Recovery drive and/or Installation media

Microsoft called today! It took all afternoon, but I'm up and running. I think they saw my email and felt guilty!!!

 

Are you using the 'kill the power three times' method? If you can get into Windows there's also:
Settings > Update & security > Recovery > Advanced start-up

The tools are the same on both, a Recovery Drive boots straight to the tools though, so it's more convenient to use. Smaller too, if you don't include system files, if you did include them it's capable or reinstalling Windows.

 

Yes, tried it Four times.

Thanks, should have mentioned, this is the problem where we have no Keyboard or Mouse or Touchscreen either.

 

the reason being is the Windows Recovery Enviroment (WindowsRE - winre.wim)
Does not contain the required driver support for your PC.

The required system drivers need to/ can be intergrated into the winre.wim with DISM driver export / import

 

I'm having trouble creating the Recovery Drive. I unchecked "make sure Back up system files to the recovery drive is selected and then select Next." because I did not think I needed to back up my system files, is this my problem? I don't need to backup system files to use this on various computers right?

Instructions say this, so I guess I'm doing it wrong:
When the tool opens, make sure Back up system files to the recovery drive is selected and then select Next.

 

It appears that a Recovery Drive is computer specific, is that correct?

 

The backed up system files are machine specific, but the bootable wim can be used on other machines.

 

Only if you include system files, and then only if it was made on an OEM pre-installed Windows 10. In that case the system files will include the OEM pre-installed apps and drivers. It is effectively a 'factory reset' drive.

A recovery drive made by a clean install of Windows 10 using the 'plain vanilla' Microsoft media will not be machine-specific, it too will be 'plain vanilla'.

 

Thanks guys, those are very good explanations!

Why won't it create a Drive when this is NOT CHOSEN: Back up system files to the recovery drive

I was hoping it would be faster to just create a generic drive to repair a pc without the "Back up system files to the recovery drive". This is on a machine that had a Clean Install of 1709 from Retail Media if that matters. I made one last night and it took a long time, what really is the benefit of this LOL, seems not worth the effort?

Update: I read up on this a little more, and let me tell you, the Terminology that people use is all messed up. Always using different Terms for the same thing etc. I got the idea of it now, but still would like to see the MS Official explanation. Unfortunately the Official MS literature is probably worse than anything else out there.

Thanks guys

 

When you create a recovery drive (by selecting Backup System Files) you are creating a Windows ONLY recovery..
The benefit to this is that the media WILL contain the Windows Updates, to date.. Thus more up to date then your installation media...

The draw back to this is - it is only the Windows OS, no 3rd party apps, programs, or drivers....

Again back to your first issue - if you integrate your current system drivers into your winre.wim, your Recovery Drive will work properly...

With windows 10 you would have to Capture a customizations.ppkg to be used with the recovery media, that would contain the 3rd party apps, programs and drivers..

Thus YOU would be better off using a program like Macrium Reflect Free - to create a System Backup

 

@Kyhi, ahhh, that is very helpful also kyhi. I'm begging to understand all this. I do use Macrium for my personal computers, but do a little repair for others on the side, and needed to understand this to better help people. My current situation was really weird, and finally got it forcing to pc into Recovery Mode. The boot sequence on this pc is less than desirable, so the first few times I could not get it. It has never had a Clean Install, so it is a little buggered up.

Then there was a password that would not allow us to use Recovery Mode, and no one had it LOL. So used another tool to break the password and finally fixed the no Keyboard or Mouse or Touchscreen problem.

So much good help here, thanks!