Cannot install January patches in a healthy W10 22H2

@Mike100
The first link is like the MS directions, but better explained. They remove the Recovery partition and create another one. But removing it w/o saving its contents elsewhere, like ReAgentC /disable does, means losing its contents. The new partition is created empty and will remain empty unless you have done ReAgentC /disable before and do ReAgentC /enable after. They have to do this (afaik) because in diskpart you cannot move a partition's first sector, what would be needed to take free space from a previous partition (C: in the case those directions can work).

The second link shows a different case, with unallocated space AFTER the Recovery partition (in the previous case, the unallocated space created by the shrink command applied to C: is BEFORE). In this case, you don't have to move the first sector and even diskpart would work, with its command extend. Idk if Aomei free can move a partition (move a partition = moving its first sector). If so, maybe there's another Aomei page. Some other free utilities can for sure.

I've seen two methods to move a partition, with or without variating its size or its last sector (background: moving files physically -to other sectors- takes significant time, while leaving them where they are does only require to vary the file tables, MFT etc, that is much quicker):

1) Leave as many of the files as possible in their current physical position. If the new partition does only "conquer" new space and the files can be in any place inside it, no file would need to be moved physically.

2) Preserve all files' relative distance to the beginning, what implies moving all the files. This is a lot slower, but such preserving is sometimes needed, or either the partition utility is done so for simplicity.

In any of the cases, the partition move conserves the files and no ReAgentC /disable - ReAgentC /enable is needed. If the utility does also apply correctly methods 1) and 2), the partition will also conserve its "added functionality" (compared to any "data partition", whose files can be anywhere and the only important thing is preserving them all).

@JLArranz

Thanks for the reply.

I realize the example AOMEI provides is not exactly what I want to do. But can it move the Recovery partition from before C to after C without data loss? Does it automatically do ReAgentC /disable, ReAgentC /enable, etc?

Like many others, I’m waiting for Microsoft to come up with new working update. In the meantime I’d like to know what options are available in case MS never has a fix for those who need to move the Recovery partition.

I've never moved a partition jumping over another, I don't have experience there. But people that know more than I about this, say to create another partition in the right place and leave alone the ancient one (or benefit it or its space in another way, but it's irrelevant for the problem), put the new as the "true" Recovery partition and follow from there. It can be done with ReagentC and Diskpart commands (I don't consider it "clean" at the very least, "safe" in the worst case, to have two partitions recognized as "Recovery" by diskmgmt.msc , but that's fixable with additional Diskpart commands).

Iirc, what Aomei and other free utilities cannot do is creating a new partition with the correct id/attributes to be a Recovery partition. But you can use Aomei to create the new partition and Diskpart to give it the needed id and attributes. About the ancient one, I'm sure that, in MBR disks, formatting the ancient Recovery partition with diskpart will turn it "normal" (it sets id=07 even if before it was id=27 like required for being Recovery), but I'm not sure about what does it happen in GPT disks. In the worst case, you would have to delete the ancient Recovery partition with diskpart.

ALL THIS, OF COURSE, WITH "REAGENTC /DISABLE" BEFORE AND "REAGENTC /ENABLE" AFTER.

I'm now doing a new batch of attempts. My first one has been (taken from a forum elsewhere):

ReAgentC /disable
diskpart
list disk
select disk 0 (my windows disk)
list partition
select partition 3 (my recovery partition)
delete partition override (deletes it)
exit (from diskpart)
ReAgentC /enable (as there isn't recovery partition, this deploys its contents in C:\Recovery ; my C: partition has over 150 GB free space and has good format in all aspects, publicly known ones and publicly unknown ones if any, Windows works well at least)

After this I've un-hidden KB5034441 and tried to install it, but it has failed with 0x80070643. Maybe I put other ideas in practice, like doing a repair install with the latter MS iso if it has already been updated with KB5034441. I'm backed by an image backup.