ReAgentC will not enable

ISSUE:
In Windows 10 Pro v1909 reagentc.exe cannot ENable from an elevated command prompt -- "The Windows RE image was not found."

QUESTIONS:

1. Does it even need to, per 18918 "Can't enable Windows Recovery Environment"?
   (or)
2. Should I just follow the steps in 90923 "Enable or Disable Windows Recovery Environment in Windows 10"?

BACKGROUND:
I am completing an upgrade-refresh-update cycle with a few identical systems. Right now there's trouble with the next-to-the-last step: updating MBR & BIOS to GPT & UEFI.

All systems were delivered using BIOS (TPM & Secure Boot disabled) with Windows 7 Pro x64 on MBR in Jan-2015 with 8GB RAM, 128GB SSDs, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Gigabit LAN NICS, USB 3 ports, and Win 8.1Pro licenses. All have functioned flawlessly. In 2018 I maximized their RAM to 16GB.

In mid-November 2019 I started doing in-place non-destructive refreshes with machine T-14: Win-7 > 10 v1803* > v190x. The MBR & BIOS were not updated, oops. B-12 (the problem device) was refreshed around December 10 the same way. In early Jan 2020 T-14 got an SSD upgrade to 1TB and the v1909 update, then in mid-January B-12 got the same.

Lastly my rig, G-13 got its new SSD before refreshing the OS to Win-10 and updating to v1909. Next, after many days and rabbit holes researching BIOS-to-UEFI updates, I both discovered my mistake and was able to painlessly update the BIOS on my rig using the Recovery|Advanced startup|Troubleshoot|Advanced options|Command prompt|MBR2GPT /convert** to convert the MBR > GPT (thus avoiding the whole copy everything to B restore back to A nightmare), then shut off Legacy ROM & turn on full UEFI. It went very smoothly. (Note: This was done within 2-weeks of refreshing the OS to Win-10 from Win-7***. )

Then I tried the same thing on B-12 and fell flat on my face, unable to get a command line option. B-12 had been refreshed to Win-10 from Win-7 over 7-weeks before and could no longer be rolled-back to Win-7. I suspect that is what caused this problem, notwithstanding my initial foul-up.

STEPS TAKEN:

1. "Enable or Disable Windows Recovery Environment in Windows 10" seems to be a possibility but will it mess up some of the customizations already in place? Will it have issues using 32-b software? I have not tried that yet.
2. "Can't enable Windows Recovery Environment" looked promising, but reagentc.exe presents the basic problem noted above.

ALL DEVICE SPECS:

• Dell Optiplex 9020 M built 01/2015
• i7-4785T CPU @ 2.20GHz
• 16GB RAM
• Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB drive
• Windows 10 Pro x64 v1909 build 18363.592
  
  • Successful in-place non-destructive refresh from Windows 7.1 Pro x64
• B-12 device with issue:
  
  • OS refreshed mid-December, updated to v1909 on 1-19-2020
  • has Bluetooth peripherals
    
    • Logitech wireless keyboard & mouse
    • Logitech unifying Bluetooth receiver
    • (I don't know that this device needs this receiver as B-12 has built-in Bluetooth?)

* It may have been v1803, it was definitely 18-something
** Source: How to convert MBR to GPT drive to switch BIOS to UEFI on Windows 10 | Windows Central
*** I did enable TPM but left it deactivated immediately discovering I was in over my head

dalchina,

Thanks for responding! As you can see, the disk is still formatted using MBR. The Unallocated 93.2GB at the right is a fail-safe area for the SSD's self-maintenance. It is not used by the OS.

PARTITIONS
Partition 1, 500MB ... no recovery data

Partition C (OS) 837.87GB ... Recovery, System Recovery, and System Repair folders present


ReAgentc
ReAgentc.exe exists at C:\Windows\System32\ and in other places



Running reagentc /info and reagentc /enable producs these results


RECOVERY FOLDER
A Recovery folder exists at C:\Recovery. Normal modes of access to it are closed off, i.e., File Explorer refuses to display the folder even with Hidden Files & Folders allowed; an elevated command prompt refuses access. Manually entering C:\Recovery in File Explorer does open the folder revealing ReAgentOld.xml as shown by MiniTool Partition Wizard, but opening that confirms it is an empty file as would be expected from its 1.02KB size. There is no WinRE.wim file on the machine, thus the Recovery folder that exists appears to be invalid.

Kyhi,

Thanks for the reminder about the attributes! Easy access, no joy. Checked the entire C partition, no WinRE.wim file anywhere. No recovery folder exists in system32\. C:\Recovery is useless. The system is making restore points ok.

Oh, yes...

1. The time-spread between Win 7 & Win 10 was a red herring after all. The successful MBR > GPT conversion of G-13 took place well after the allowed "roll back" window of 10-days, fwiw;
2. checked into doing a reset, but it's not a practical alternative due to losing everything except Windows and the user's data files; and
3. I can boot into the command prompt from the installation USB, but it's of no use as that does nothing to get the Recovery folder up and working.

I do recall recently seeing something somewhere (tenforums?) about manually rebuilding a Recovery folder. Hmm...

You could get a copy of the entire recovery folder including winre.wim from the installation media
and put it in c:\windows\system32\ .

Then try running reagentc

Easily done with 7-zip

SIW2 wrote:

You could get a copy of the entire recovery folder including winre.wim from the installation media and put it in c:\windows\system32\ .

Then try running reagentc

Ohhhh, I LIKE that!!

I spent the better part of last night stuck in a brain loop: OK, what do I need in there? What's the code look like? See the structure... wait! Not 10, has to be 7-to-10 code. OK, where to get that? Whaaa.... what do I need in there? What's the code look like? See the structure... Round-and-round-and-round. Argh!

I am very definitely going to give this a try.

SIW2 wrote:

You could get a copy of the entire recovery folder including winre.wim from the installation media and put it in c:\windows\system32\ .

Then try running reagentc

I've been out of town and am just now getting back on this. My installation media is a USB flash drive created following Microsoft's instructions. There is no Recovery folder to copy.

Perhaps I could go to the working device nearby, disable recovery, copy the Recovery folder to another medium, re-enable recovery on the good device, return to B-12, paste that copied folder, check the contents, and go from there? I think I'll try that & post the results here.

7Natives said:

SIW2 wrote: I've been out of town and am just now getting back on this. My installation media is a USB flash drive created following Microsoft's instructions. There is no Recovery folder to copy.

Perhaps I could go to the working device nearby, disable recovery, copy the Recovery folder to another medium, re-enable recovery on the good device, return to B-12, paste that copied folder, check the contents, and go from there? I think I'll try that & post the results here.

You have to mount an image from the install.esd or install.wim file contained in the Sources folder of the USB flash drive. Use dism to mount the image. Once you have an image mounted, then you can find the C:\Windows\System32\Recovery folder and it should have windowsre.wim.

There is no Recovery folder to copy.

The recover folder is inside install.wim or install.esd.

As shown in the picture I posted HERE