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Sergio Peris
Sergio Peris

Posted on • Originally published at sertxu.dev

Recreate Windows Recovery Environment partition

#windows #tutorial

When you install Windows on a drive it creates different partitions, one for the boot, another for the data and another for the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).

The WinRE partition usually is the last one on your drive, so if you clone your disk to another bigger, to expand the data partition you will be required to delete the existing WinRE partition.

Following the next steps you will be able to recreate it.

Open a command prompt as an Administrator and run carefully as some command might be different on your computer.

First, check the WinRE status to check if it's enabled.

reagentc /info

  Windows RE status:   Enabled
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If it's enabled we should disable it.

reagentc /disable
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Now, using the DiskPart utility we're going to create a delete the partition where WinRE is located.

diskpart
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Now, we should find the disk where Windows is installed.

list disk

  Núm Disco  Estado      Tamaño   Disp     Din  Gpt
  ---------- ----------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disco 0    En línea     953 GB      0 B        *
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And we select it.

select disk 0

  El disco 0 es ahora el disco seleccionado.
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Next, we should find the WinRE partition.

list partition

  Núm Partición  Tipo              Tamaño   Desplazamiento
  -------------  ----------------  -------  ---------------
  Partición 1    Sistema            100 MB  1024 KB
  Partición 2    Reservado           16 MB   101 MB
  Partición 3    Principal          952 GB   117 MB
  Partición 4    Recuperación       786 MB   953 GB
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And we select it.

select partition 4

  La partición 4 es ahora la partición seleccionada.
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And we delete it.

delete partition override
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Keep in mind you should leave at least 250 MB available to recreate the WinRE partition.

If you want to expand your data partition, you can do it now, once you're ready to go follow the next steps.

To recreate the WinRE partition we will use the DiskPart utility again.

diskpart
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We list the available disks. Note the asterisk character * at the GPT column, some steps differ if your drive is GPT or MBR.

If your drive has the asterisk character, your drive is GPT. Otherwise, your drive is MBR.

list disk

  Núm Disco  Estado      Tamaño   Disp     Din  Gpt
  ---------- ----------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disco 0    En línea     953 GB      0 B        *
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And we select it.

select disk 0

  El disco 0 es ahora el disco seleccionado.
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Next, we create the partition.

  • If your disk is GPT: 
create partition primary id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac

gpt attributes =0x8000000000000001
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  • If your disk is MBR: 
create partition primary id=27
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Now, we format the newly created partition.

format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows RE tools"
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  • If your disk is MBR you should also run: 
set id=27
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We've created the WinRE partition, you can check it running:

list partition
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We can now exit the DiskPart utility.

exit
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Now, we should re-enable WinRE.

reagentc /enable
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To confirm it has successfully re-enabled, run:

reagentc /info

  Windows RE status:   Enabled
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