Is that a factory OEM install? My laptop had a bigger recovery partition with the factory image in it. I think it was 16 GB or so. If you do a refresh or reset on a non OEM install I do believe your prompted for your install media. I'd have to go look at the tutorial or actually try it to 100% confirm it. As you say, most likely just the basic tools to fix boot issues etc.
Yea I tried startup repair with both flash media builds both said no tools were detected.
Tried most other options none did anything.
The 300MB partition contains WinRE.wim (246MB in 9926). It isn't a recovery partition for refreshing your system - it only lets you boot into the Windows Recovery Environment (like the picture below). You don't really need it if you have an ISO.
Attachment 12674
It is a factory (Asus) install and I already had to refresh once because I bricked the OS with unnecessary experiments, LOL. The refresh went smoothly and no installation media was required.
And that time I bricked it real bad. I had assigned a partition letter to the EFI partition with Partition Wizard (because disk management would not do it - which should have warned me). What I did not know is that PW also changed the partition format in the process. When I rebooted, I got as far as the login screen and then the screen went black. Nothing worked any more and I could not get any place with F9 or F8. I had to go via the power button on the login screen - a secret backdoor.
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