Dual Boot question #2

Hello,

I have a dual boot laptop (Legacy BIOS), with W 10 Pro x64 (clean installation from Media Creation Tool dvd) and W7 x64
The disk management layout is the following: (from left to right):
Basic MBR Hard Disk 0
1) Recovery OEM Sony partition 15 GB primary (hidden partition)
2) System Reserved 100 MB with 64.2 MB free, was 70 MB free before W 10 installation, primary
3) W 7 primary (When I boot to W7 it's on C:\ )
4) W 10 primary ((When I boot to W10 it's on C:\ )
I have installed W10 on a previously manually formatted, via Diskpart, primary partition so after installation, normal, the W 10 Recovery 500 MB partition was not created.
The dual boot system runs perfectly fine for almost a year now.
However, although not needed, because I use a third party WinPE image backup cd, to make backups of my systems on external HDD's, I can still access the Windows Recovery Environment under Settings and perform a Reset or Refresh operation. I haven't tried all the other Troubleshooting Advanced Recovery options but the menu seems accessible since I used sometimes the "disable digital driver signature enforcement" feature.

Under W 10 when I open C:\Recovery this folder is empty.
Now the questions are::
1) where are the files of the Recovery partition located, are they relocated, after W 10 installation on C: or what? If not, where do W 10 find the necessary resources to perform those operations? (Reset/Refresh).
As mentionned earlier, I only have the 100 MB W7 System Reserved partition, which had 70 MB's free before W 10 installation, now it has 64.2 MB's free so I assume that upon W 10 installation W 10 wrote 5-6 MB's of "something" to it.
2) Is there any disadvantages of not having the 500 MB W10 Recovery partition?

I do not intend to use Bitlocker in the future but this option is also available under Control Panel. I assume that Bitlocker files should be on the Recovery partition, if it does not exist where are they?
In my case what are the potential disadvantages of not having a W 10 Recovery partition on Basic MBR Hard Disk?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

In a Command Prompt (Admin) - it's on the list if you right click the start icon, run:

reagentc /info

That will tell you if you have a WindowsRE (Recovery Environment) active and where the files are. They are probably in C:\Recovery, but they have the hidden and system attributes set. In order to see them you would need to have both hidden and protected system files set to visible.

The only disadvantage to not having the recovery partition is that you might have to boot from a Windows 10 installation USB flash drive or DVD to get some of the repair options that would normally be available from the recovery partition.

NavyLCDR said:

In a Command Prompt (Admin) - it's on the list if you right click the start icon, run:

reagentc /info

That will tell you if you have a WindowsRE (Recovery Environment) active and where the files are. They are probably in C:\Recovery, but they have the hidden and system attributes set. In order to see them you would need to have both hidden and protected system files set to visible.

The only disadvantage to not having the recovery partition is that you might have to boot from a Windows 10 installation USB flash drive or DVD to get some of the repair options that would normally be available from the recovery partition.

Hello NavyLCDR,

Actually, I had already run the reagentc /info command and it looks similar to the first image here: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4...dows-10-a.html so no WinRE registered.
Also, I had already checked with hidden and protected system files set to visible, and folder is still empty. What puzzles me a lot is that I can access the Advanced StartUp Options menu, I have already in the past opened Settings - Recovery and clicked on Reset this pc, just for testing purposes, then it restarted in Recovery Environment then, if I recall correctly, W 10 started to prepare some files and a few mins later I had a screen message mentionning something similar to "Everything is ready", instead of clicking "Next", in order to proceed, I clicked on "Cancel", but never got a message like "Could not find the Recovery Environment" or similar, thus my question, how on earth W 10 was able to prepare a "Reset" with C:\Recovery empty?? What do you think??
Thanks for your reply.

Vaio 7 said:

What puzzles me a lot is that I can access the Advanced StartUp Options menu, I have already in the past opened Settings - Recovery and clicked on Reset this pc, just for testing purposes, then it restarted in Recovery Environment then, if I recall correctly, W 10 started to prepare some files and a few mins later I had a screen message mentionning something similar to "Everything is ready", instead of clicking "Next", in order to proceed, I clicked on "Cancel", but never got a message like "Could not find the Recovery Environment" or similar, thus my question, how on earth W 10 was able to prepare a "Reset" with C:\Recovery empty?? What do you think??
Thanks for your reply.

My guess is that your "recovery environment" is actually the winre.wim file in C:\Windows\System32\Recovery? If you selected to reset your PC, then it would re-install Windows from the C:\Windows\WinSxS folder.

Vaio 7 said:

Aha! Interesting point.
So re-installing Windows from C:\Windows\WinSxS folder would have the same results, in theory, as from C:\Recovery or not?

I don't have a C:\Recovery on this computer... if the only file in C:\Recovery was winre.wim - that is only the recovery menu and not the files required to re-install Windows 10. In order to re-install Windows 10 (reset PC), the source has to be an install.wim file or the folders and files in C:\Windows\WinSxS, either of which amount to 3+ GB.

NavyLCDR said:

I don't have a C:\Recovery on this computer... if the only file in C:\Recovery was winre.wim - that is only the recovery menu and not the files required to re-install Windows 10. In order to re-install Windows 10 (reset PC), the source has to be an install.wim file or the folders and files in C:\Windows\WinSxS, either of which amount to 3+ GB.

Hello,

I looked at C:\Windows\System32\Recovery and there are 2 files ReAgent.xml & ReAgent_Merged.xml.
My C:\Windows\WinSxS folder has 15.000 + files, so difficult to check any folder individually and it's about 5.88 GB in size so maybe W 10 is pulling the Reset pc resources from there... I do not know.
Thanks.