I need a Windows 10 1709 repair disk!

You should have an option on one of the screens providing a link to Disk options ( or something like that), this will take you to a screen that allows you to delete all or any existing partitions and create fresh - I would always advise to remove all existing partitions and allow the installer to create what it needs

Obviously be sure that you are not removing any partitions that contain data you need

I don't actually use Macrium Reflect but I do recommend it.

I use a commercial alternative from Aomei for my backups (in Partition Image Format) and I can recover individual Partitions or even down to file level.

Hopefully someone will be able to confirm that this can or cannot be done with Macrium :)

If I interpret correctly, the only partition you have left is data of some sort, with a big unallocated in front of it. If so, yes, Macrium can do this. Drag the mrimage partitions one at a time, left to right, from the mrimage down to the unallocated area. All three will then be snugged up together in the unallocated area, in the proper order. Macrium will take care of the file structure and bcddata. Close Macrium and reboot.

bertie11 said:

And there is my problem, I'm still not sure how I build this recovery disk. I can see it will be very useful in the future, although I read in this thread that it isn't up to date, at least, I thought I read that. So there would be a load of Windows updates to hack through later, after the install?

I'm afraid I will need a basic step by step guide on how to make this disk, if someone has the patience!

-Download the ISO in the first post of Kyhi's thread.
-Find the download, right-click and select MOUNT
-The ISO will be mounted as a virtual DVD drive, and assigned a drive letter
-Open File Explorer to view all the files in the mounted ISO
-plug in a FAT32-formatted USB drive
-copy all the files from the mounted ISO to the flash drive
-eject the flash drive
You now have the Kyhi Recovery Environment ready to use on your flash drive.

You can boot the system to it, run Macrium, mount the latest Macrium image, and look through your C:\Program Files and C:\Program Files (x86) to see what programs you had installed on the system. You can also navigate to your user account, and copy off all your documents if need be.

bertie11 said:

Re the contents of my C:\ drive. I used to have a list of all the programs I had installed and most of them were on C:\ so if I do a clean instal, zap everything on the disk I will need to rely on a fading memory! On the other hand, it will be a good opportunity to ditch a load of stuff I hardly ever use. I have recovered my eM Client so I have access to my serial numbers etc.

Re the Reflect image, I think I usually do an auto validate on creation but now I'm not 100% sure. In any case that won't matter if it fails as once I have my new system setup and running the borked system will be the new spare so it would be a slimmed down version of my 'good' system. That would allow me to dispose of this flaky current spare that I'm using now.

Exciting, isn't it?

Thanks Simrick.

Barman58, I just used 'Advanced', all OK!

The Macrium image can also be "verified" before you restore it.

bertie11 said:

Yes, got it! I didn't see delete the first time, now I have deleted all except one partition and now I have Windows 10 working again.

I had already copied my data and saved it onto a USB drive. Now I need to decide whether to carry on and create my partitioning structure or drag a Reflect image of C:\ onto the new C:\ but I don't know if I can then drag 3 other partitions off the image and if I did that does Reflect create the new partition structure at the same time?

Thanks for the pointer Barman, I need to loook closer at things!

I guess, I don't know what these other three partitions are, so I can't say if you should do that or not. But dragging the C partition of the image over top of the newly-created C-partition on Drive 0 and going through the restore process should give you back your old Windows installation, complete with your programs and documents.

If there was nothing on the system but one Windows installation, then I would only copy over the C partition.

I remember @topgundcp had posted a picture (or gif perhaps) of this exact procedure for someone, last year (dragging the C partition from a Macrium image over to the current C partition for a restore); I can't seem to find it...maybe he has it handy, if he's around?

Here's one example, but it's not the one I was thinking of:
macrium....unable to drag drop partitions to target drive - Windows 10 Forums

Perhaps this is a little bit better explanation, but still not the one I was thinking of (apologies):

Macrium image restore changes partition layout Solved - Windows 10 Forums

Open Admin Command Prompt and type:

mountvol U: /s
del /s /f /q U:\efi\*.*
bcdboot c:\windows /s U: /f UEFI

Then reboot to see if it fixes the problem. If not, we'll go from there.

NOTE: There's spaces in between those forward slashes.