Factory recovery - Create a Custom Recovery Partition  

Hi all,

Hate to bug but is there any feedback on my previous posts, please?
#95
Factory recovery - Create a Custom Recovery Partition

#96
Factory recovery - Create a Custom Recovery Partition

If losing settings here and there is normal behavior, then I'd like to know that so I can pursue other options.
If it's not, then I am hoping the community can help me figure out what I can do to make this work

Thanks in advance, all.

The guide certanly works, its a lot harder under GPT since Windows creates by default a 450mb recovery partition at the begining and it has 2 BCDs, one specially for recovery when you are getting blue screens.

The problem im having is, even trought i maganed to get it working, im doing disk cloning, consist in creating an image of a working system on a HDD and then apply it to other hard disks, when i do that the recovery system stops working, thats probably because of using a drive letter too set the BCD.

Im looking forward to make it so it always looks intro the first partition on the hardisk. Any idea on how to do that?

Also looking into my own W10 GPT system, it looks like Windows 10 GPT default practice for recovery is placing the winre wim inside the same folder as the BCD.
"ramdisk=()\Recovery\WindowsRE\Winre.wim" for OS and application device on default "Windows recovery enviroment", not sure how that would even work.

Kari said:

Why on earth are you booting from USB? Tutorial instructs to boot normally, and select recovery from boot menu

Because I'm emulating a situation where my system drive crashed.

From the tutorial:

Kari said:

If your system disk crashes and no boot menu is shown, you can do recovery from your custom recovery partition by booting from Windows install media and running Windows Setup manually from recovery partition.

My install media (on Earth, at least) is a USB drive. Any idea as to why the install happened from there rather than from the custom partition from which I launched it?

Kari said:

OF course volume / partition names are not saved. The recovery partition will perform a normal, clean install, only difference being that it contains your installed software and user accounts

That wasn't obvious to me, thank you for clarifying.

Appreciate the help

Any idea of what can be done so Windows can still find the device after passwing trought a cloning software?

I tryied this, i used something like this before to boot winpe from network using PXE

bcdedit /create {ramdiskoptions} /d "Ramdisk"
bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice boot
bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdipath \boot\boot.sdi
for /f "tokens=2 delims={}" %%i in ('bcdedit.exe /create /d "Reinstalar Windows" /application OSLOADER') do (set guid={%%i})
bcdedit /set %guid% device ramdisk=[boot]\boot\winre.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
bcdedit /set %guid% path \windows\system32\winload.efi
bcdedit /set %guid% osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\boot\winre.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
bcdedit /set %guid% systemroot \windows
bcdedit /set %guid% winpe yes
bcdedit /set %guid% detecthal yes
bcdedit /displayorder %guid% /addlast

And placing the sdi and wim in the same partition as the BCDs and it says it cant find the device.

OEMs do this all the time to mass produce, they still have the recovery enviroment working there most be a way.

Kari said:

Replace all files and folders on a bootable, normal Windows install USB with files and folders from your recovery partition, boot from it and install your custom Windows from that USB

I did that, thank you.

Kari said:

If the recovery partition is on another HDD, not on crashed system disk, boot with normal Windows install media and instead of clicking Install, press SHIFT + F10 to open Command Prompt, use DISKPART to find out current partition ID letter for the recovery partition, and run Setup.exe from that partition manually

In the scenario I was imagining my laptop does not start (for whatever reason) and built-in recovery options are not available but the drive itself is physically functioning. That means I still have my D partition with data and E partition with custom recovery image I created based on your helpful tutorial.

In this scenario I would use a bootable Windows install USB to get to the install screen and do exactly what you described to access the recovery partition.

Thank you very much.

Great tutorial!! I've done all the steps and it works like a charm, but, I did a recovery (for testing) and I have some questions, I hope you can help me.

When the installation begins, in the installation type, I selected Custom installation: Windows install Only (Advanced); then I selected only the C: drive. Is that the correct wey?

Second: When the installation finishes, the boot menu changes. It displays 2 Windows 10 options and 1 Recovery. Both Windows 10 options work, but, what can I do to make the boot file to display only 1 Windows installation once it finish the recovery? Update: I made a second refresh, and now I have 3 Windows 10 options in the boot menu.

I know I can enter windows and disable the second option on the msconfig tool, but I'm planning to deploy this recovery in my company and the duplicate menu is very annoying. Is there a fix outside msconfig? Maybe something that can be changed in the batch file?