Unable to do a Repair Install or DISM, appears to be in WinPE State

Windows 10 Pro cannot be repaired. Perpetual WinPE State?

I have to rebuild my Windows 10 Pro 64 Workstation every 3 or 4 months because it appears to be placed in a perpetual WinPE state and cannot be repaired. This time it first appeared attempting to install Windows Admin Center from an Administrator Command Shell, while logged into the desktop with an administrator user. Note the pop-up error referring to WinPE. I am NOT logged onto WinPE.
Please note that this is the first time Windows Admin Center was a symptom since my person domain is small and serves just me, I just started using it.
The first hint; attempting to install Windows Admin Center.[IMG]file:///C:\Users\MFAKLI~1.000\AppData\Local


So I attempt to clean-up with SFC and DISM. Note that DISM also insists I am in WinPE, but I am not.



Let’s look at the Event Viewer, but No logs are able to be viewed.



It seems like I should do a Repair Install of Windows, as per Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade , so I mound the latest ISO, and lo and behold, the repair install thinks I’m in WinPE;

The upgrade option isn’t available if you start your computer using Windows installation media. If a copy of Windows is already installed on this computer and you want to upgrade, remove the installation media and restart your computer. After Windows has started normally, insert the installation media and run Windows Setup.

I am NOT in WinPE here either. I rebooted, mounted the latest Windows 10 Pro x64 ISO file, and ran Setup.exe (I tried by clicking within file explorer, and another try from a command prompt.
I am running Windows 10 Pro x64, release 21H2, on a 4-core i7, with 18GB of RAM. I am current of all Windows Updates. I am current on Norton 360 Premier. My workstation is a member of my personal Windows Server 2019-based domain.


I have been hit with this problem every 3 or 4 months, since after release 1809, and the only option is for me to do a clean install onto a reinitialized disk. I have reported this problem on multiple forums over the last few years, but the only advice I receive is to run SFC and DISM to repair my system (read above and be assured that doing so does NOT repair my system.
Windows Updates are still able to be installed.
I believe the root to understanding this bug is to understand what these Microsoft programs are referencing to make them believe they are running in a WinPE environment.

Do you have this key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinPE

Hi,

This is the first time I hear this one.

Verify If the option to boot to PE is enabled in BCD and also check if your system has these Registry key that could have been set.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinPE

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MiniNT

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\currentcontrolset\control\PEBootType (PE2)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\currentcontrolset\control\PEFirmwareType (PE4)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Setup\SystemSetupInProgress

From the top of my head these are the first place to check.

Please boot your computer with Windows Setup Media and from Windows Recovery Environment start the Command Prompt.

Please type the below command into Command Prompt and press the Enter key.

The following commands scans integrity of all protected Windows system files and repairs files with problems when possible.

Code:

Dism  /image:D:  /Cleanup-Image  /RestoreHealth  /Source:wim:E:\sources\install.wim:1  /LimitAccess

Sfc  /Scannow   /OFFBOOTDIR=D:\   /OFFWINDIR=D:\Windows

Please replace partition letter D: with Windows installed partition letter. When the computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment, the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1 and 10 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assigned any other drive letter, usually D: drive letter is assign to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit /enum | find "osdevice" command can be used to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition, the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.

Please replace E: drive letter with Windows 10 Setup Media drive letter. The following commands list all the drive letters detected by Windows 10:

Code:

Diskpart
List volume

The 1 index number tells DISM utility to retrieve the corrupted or missing files from which edition of Windows OS. The Install.wim file can contain more than one edition of the Windows OS. You can execute following command to found out index number of your Windows OS edition that you want to repair.

Code:

Dism  /Get-WimInfo  /Wimfile:"L:\sources\install.wim"

Replace the L:\sources with directory path where Install.wim stored. As you can see, there are two editions of Windows 10 and all have index number.

It also seem that could be because of corruption in DISM...

Error: “DISM Does Not Support Servicing Windows PE” - 5 Solutions

The guide is not precise to what have to be done offline But when they use "/image:" the command have to run offline.

It looks like you have to repair your dism off-line to re-enable it to be used on-line...

When the tool you need to fix your tool is broken...

Weird.

SIW2 said:

Do you have this key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinPE

No I do not have that key

- - - Updated - - -

MaloK said:

Hi,

This is the first time I hear this one.

Verify If the option to boot to PE is enabled in BCD and also check if your system has these Registry key that could have been set.

It is NOT set.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinPE

No such key

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MiniNT



HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\currentcontrolset\control\PEBootType (PE2)

No such key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\currentcontrolset\control\PEFirmwareType (PE4)

No such key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Setup\SystemSetupInProgress

No such key

From the top of my head these are the first place to check.

I know I am NOT in WinPE.

Ok....

That Screenshot if from your registry ?

I wonder what did this... Remove the MiniNT key.

Then reboot your computer and attempt your DISM operations again.

Also make sure that your BCD does not include the "Boot to PE" option enabled

I have no experience with ReFS. But the downsides of enabling it are tremendous.

I'm Not sure if the registry key is needed once you formatted to access ReFS volume.

Beware of the MiniNT registry key – Quppa.net

How to format any drive in Windows 8.1 with ReFS

Having a MiniNT Key in a Standard Windows installation does not seems to be a great idea.

MaloK said:

I have no experience with ReFS. But the downsides of enabling it are tremendous.

I'm Not sure if the registry key is needed once you formatted to access ReFS volume.

Beware of the MiniNT registry key – Quppa.net

How to format any drive in Windows 8.1 with ReFS

Having a MiniNT Key in a Standard Windows installation does not seems to be a great idea.

I use ReFS wherever possible on my four Windows servers, so I've kept ReFS capability on my workstation for the event I need to remount a network drive locally. Imagine my amazement to discover it was the cause of this repeated need to rebuild my workstation when DISM and the event viewer stopped working. I had the ReFS enabled when I built (last rebuilt) this workstation. All was working well, but apparently it was a time bomb waiting for some unknown event to set it off.

I removed the MiniNT registry key and all is working. I am grateful to have this resolved.