Create Reset Recovery Image in Windows 10  

7-zip can look inside .esd also

Most likely your winre.wim was on separate partition and won't necessarily be included in any wim or esd files you made yourself.

somebody could upload them otherwise.

SIW2 said:

7-zip can look inside .esd also

Most likely your winre.wim was on separate partition and won't necessarily be included in any wim or esd files you made yourself.

somebody could upload them otherwise.

Was able to find it in the .esd. Time to boot to advanced boot and see how it goes!

If anybody wants a fresh reagent.xml just copy and paste this into text file using notepad and save it as reagent.xml

Code:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' standalone='yes'?>
<WindowsRE version="2.0">
    <WinreBCD id=""></WinreBCD>
    <WinreLocation path="" id="0" offset="0"></WinreLocation>
    <ImageLocation path="" id="0" offset="0"></ImageLocation>
    <PBRImageLocation path="" id="0" offset="0" index="0"></PBRImageLocation>
    <PBRCustomImageLocation path="" id="0" offset="0" index="0"></PBRCustomImageLocation>
    <InstallState state="0"></InstallState>
    <OsInstallAvailable state="0"></OsInstallAvailable>
    <CustomImageAvailable state="0"></CustomImageAvailable>
    <WinREStaged state="0"></WinREStaged>
    <ScheduledOperation state="4"></ScheduledOperation>
    <OperationParam path=""></OperationParam>
    <OperationPermanent state="0"></OperationPermanent>
    <OsBuildVersion path=""></OsBuildVersion>
    <OemTool state="0"></OemTool>
</WindowsRE>

Brink said:

Not that I'm aware of, but you could just create a system image that would serve the same purpose.

Macrium Reflect Free would be a good 3rd party program to use for this.

betamax said:

just tried it with dism /apply-image from winpe. my preinstalled Chrome is there after going thru OOBE. so at least there's that.

I read through this whole thread, and I think this messages is the point where the thread switches from the usefulness of restoring a customized image state to settling for restoring a fresh installation (as if new). The latter may be useful for some who don't typically keep install media available and don't regularly backup their OS.

I wanted to follow-up on that older customized method as it's still a useful solution for those of us backing up systems regularly.

If you've setup an environment where you periodically capture a windows image states in WIM format, then you always have a relatively recent image to restore from. There is an unequivocal benefit to this for those of us with this habit.

Windows 10 does allow you to set that custom image location through /setosimage switch and register it with ReagentC, even though it's a deprecated function officially.

What doesn't appear to work on Win10 and likely Win11 anymore is the Reset My PC from previous Windows 8.1 that would actually restore from that specific WIM image you had set with the /setosimage switch.

There is a whole other method to create those recoveries through a different process now, USMT, not using WIMs which as much as I'd like to read up and practice with, I'm too far invested in the WIM format right now to abandon it just yet.

Continuing on with the legacy style, two ways of booting into the recovery environment yields different options.

Booting into a Windows 10 Recovery USB, under Advanced Troubleshooting Options, there is no Reset My PC option.

Rebooting into the recovery environment directly without the Recovery USB does show the Reset My PC option, progressing onto "Remove Everything", it reboots and offers you two subsequent options "Just remove my files" and "Fully clean the drive", selecting Fully clean the drive is the intuitive choice if you're familiar with the Win8.1 Reset My PC function. From there a last "Reset" selection starts the process.

As I said, this process though does not work as it used to on Win8. The customized image is not being restored.

It appears instead that Windows is cleaning up the OS of any customization as best it can, like an Apple or Android device resetting. It's a major operation that leaves you in an OOBE environment with a vanilla OS, so it's not what you'd want if your target was to restore your custom image.

Instead, booting into the recovery environment CLI would be the next best thing to restore your customized OS image.

If you're familiar with those commands, you should be able to make quick go of the wipe/prep work and restore of the OS volume and restore your custom OS capture.

One final note, move your WinRE outside your OS volume first. If you're booting into the recovery environment and you're hosting it on your OS volume, the custom image restore is essentially overwriting it. Best practices are to keep it in a separate volume anyway.