Restoring the winre.wim file

[hikerguy]

Hello, I'm currently fighting a problem related to Windows Update and the update named 0x80070643. While doing research on this problem, I discovered that winre is not only diabled, but the winre.wim file is missing. Is there a straight-forward way to to resbuild/restore this file? I do not have the Windows ISO file (I was running Win10 for years and upgraded to Win10 Pro about a year ago through an online process). And, the only other computer I have access to is running just Windows 10. Here's output from a few commands showing that file is missing:

C:\Windows\system32>reagentc /info
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:

Windows RE status: Disabled
Windows RE location:
Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: 27db7897-6d09-11ed-9a93-fd234867ac9e
Recovery image location:
Recovery image index: 0
Custom image location:
Custom image index: 0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.


C:\Windows\system32>reagentc /enable
REAGENTC.EXE: The Windows RE image was not found.

 

[Shintaro]

There seem's to be some problems around that update.

But according to the site below you don't need it.

Although not having a recovery environment is cause for concern.

I'll have to dig a little more as I have been away for a bit from IT and need to catch up.

From the Microsoft site HERE:

Devices attempting to install the January 2024 Windows Recovery Environment update ( KB5034441) might display an error related to the size of the Recovery Environment's partition. The Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is used to repair or recover from issues affecting Windows.

Resulting from this error, the following message might be displayed.

"0x80070643 - ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE"

Important: If your Windows device does not have a recovery environment configured, you do not need this update ( KB5034441). In this case, the error can be ignored.

To determine whether your device has a recovery environment configured, inspect the WinRE status by following these steps:

Open a Command Prompt window (cmd) as admin.
To check the WinRE status, run reagentc /info. If the WinRE is configured, a "Windows RE status" field will appear in the output, with value "Enabled". If WinRE is not configured, this field will have the value "Disabled".

Workaround: It might be necessary to increase the size of the WinRE partition in order to avoid this issue and complete the installation. Note that 250 megabytes of free space is required in the recovery partition. Devices which do not have sufficient free space in the recovery partition can use a script to extend the partition size. A sample script has been provided in the documentation for adding an update package to WinRE, Extend the Windows RE Partition. Guidance to manually change the WinRE partition size can additionally be found in KB5028997: Instructions to manually resize your partition to install the WinRE update.

Next steps: We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.

Affected platforms:

Client: Windows 11, version 21H2; Windows 10, version 22H2; Windows 10, version 21H2
Server: Windows Server 2022

I haven't tried the possible fix HERE.


Hope this helps.

 

[hikerguy]

Thanks for those links. I'd agree with you after reading that, but I do want to at least restore my WinRE issue. I'm still trying to figure out how to do that.

 

[Shintaro]

That's the million-dollar question.

Trying to fix something like that could potentially break other things, but then again what is the impact of not having WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment).
I am playing catchup with IT after being out of the industry for some time, so I need to follow up on the technical side before I could really suggest anything other than backing up your files (docs etc...) to some type of other storage (One Drive etc...)

Maybe someone else here has suggestions?

I see you are having trouble with the duplicate post problem. I have sent a message to the Administrator.
What browser are you using?

 

[hikerguy]

FINALLY go Windows Update to run successfully. Here's what I ended up doing:

Go to:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Click "Download now" under the section titled "Creae Windows 10 installation media".

Scan the downloaded file with your antivirus program (I use Malwarebytes). If clean, click on it to run it.

The first thing that appears is a windows with the heading "Applicable notices and license terms". Click Accept.

Click the radio button titled "Create installation media".

This will download the ISO file (named windows.iso).

To make things easy, create a folder on your Desktop named WindowsISO.

Using 7Zip, extract all the folders/files to the folder you just created (in this example, the folder named "WindowsISO").

Use the process detailed at the link below to convert the install.esd file to install.wim:

How to Extract Install.ESD to Install.WIM (Windows 10/8) - WinTips.org

When I used the following command (from the URL above), I was initially getting an error 87 (after having replaced the IndexNumber with the IndexNumber of my OS. This will make sense when you read the info from the link above). After getting that error message a couple of times, I tried using the command from that link WITHOUT first replacing the IndexNumber variable. I pasted that into the cmd/DOS window, the used my arrow key to go back, erse the word "IndexNumber" and entered my indexnumber. THEN it worked:

dism /export-image /SourceImageFile:install.esd /SourceIndex:IndexNumber /DestinationImageFile:install.wim /Compress:max /CheckIntegrity

I then ran install.wim from the DOS window, went to the path:

C:\install.wim\Windows\System32\Recovery\

I then copied the winre.wim file from there and pasted it into the same directory on my PC. After doing that, I was able to successfully run Windows Update again (but this was after previously extending the WinRE partition using a program I already had named MiniTool Partition Wizard. Very good program for cloning and extending partitions by the way.

You can see if Windows RE is enabled by running the following command:

reagentc /info

If it shows Disabled, run this command:

reagentc /enable

 

[Shintaro]

If you think that everything has been resolved, please mark the thread as SOLVED.