Bork Tuesday, Any Problems Yet?

KB5034441: Windows Recovery Environment update for Windows 10, version 21H2 and 22H2: January 9, 2024
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...y-9-2024-62c04204-aaa5-4fee-a02a-2fdea17075a8

 

If you read, it's done.

 

Postponed my updates on Win 10 Pro until February 16th. I'll wait until the fiasco is over.

 

I ended up d/l wushowhide which Majorgeeks hosts on its website. I know, I know, MS deprecated it but in this case, even though I was getting other updates like Defender definitions, I did not like this red splotch of a failure in my face every day. So it's gone for now.

I somehow have a corrupted winre (is missing and can't be enabled) and I don't feel like rebuilding it or repair-installing Windows. So imma let it slide.

I have Windows 10 Home version so it's not like it's relevant on here anyway. I don't even use my tpm.

 

Funny my wife's computer Windows 7 has not been updated in more than 5 years maybe more. Never got hit with a virus/ malware.

So if it takes windows 10, months to fix no worries.

 

There is absolutely no problem with installing KB5034441, and of course it's good to have it on your computer. But at the same time the absence of WinRE does not prevent the operation and use of Windows. However, it is needed when using the Windows Reset feature and if you don't have any bootable local copy or installation media.
For Windows 10 and 11, this is actually very important, but not so important for older versions, because there is no automatic Windows repair feature.
And it's also natural that you can't update if WinRE is missing, disabled or damaged.
If someone has a problem, it would be sensible to find out the cause and then eliminate or fix it, but not hide or ignore it.
In any case, I would recommend having WinRE on your hard drive and learning how to use it, so that there are no problems if you need to use it.

 

Huh. OK so I installed my 11 Insiders drive to check this, and yes! The partition had been automatically resized. I'm now installing various Windows 11-specific updates so this must've happened earlier at some point. (Windows 11 Insiders beta)

Yes, a pity for most who didn't get the update without this hassle in Windows 10.

Spoiler

 

Had no problems with KB5034441 on my own PC, where the Windows RE image is installed in the Windows 10 partition.

However, the problem did occur on Windows 10 machines of family members that I help (not on Windows 11 machines), where Windows RE is stored in a separate partition.

Microsoft’s suggested manual fix solved the issue.

 

One one PC; the one with the recovery partition behind the Windows partition.

Another PC has the recovery partition in front of the Windows partition. I guess I need to use GParted to increase the recovery partition with 250 MB (decrease Windows with 250 MB and move it to the right first).

Since I'll then be moving the entire Windows partition can I also delete the recovery partition (R) and add it behind the Windows partition (W)?

(So go from R _ W to W - 250 _ R + 250 instead of R + 250 _ W - 250?)

Anything I need to check first? (Is it possible the partition is also the boot partition?)

 

See this posting: https://superuser.com/questions/1453790/how-to-move-the-recovery-partition-on-windows-10 . Also, read the entire posting since some issues were encountered in the original posted procedure.

Good luck on this one!

 

It hasn't been pulled. It still comes up in an update check every morning on my work computer, including today. It obviously still fails. I've hidden it on all my own machines, but I do not have the privileges on my work computer to do this. I've alerted our IT team, as this is their prob, not mine.

Interesting that the MS document says you don't need this update if you don't have a recovery partition. It should also say you don't need it if you run Windows Home & don't use Bitlocker. No idea why they don't just pull it for machines it doesn't apply too....

 

get patient, drink some tea, MS is working on it was said above.

and its like i wrote - older windows 10 installation had smaller recovery partitions, while now 600megs+ are required. either you have space behind to resize, or cut the partition before or after - if you dare. the powershell from support and other pages script is working, but it need space to work on.

 

Thanks! I was so lucky that I made a Reflect backup before toying with the partitions, because apparently this partition was the boot partition...

(Windows did not boot anymore after deleting the partition)

After a lot of fiddling back at the initial layout. Going to give it another try...

 

GParted complained about moving the Windows system partition, so I decided to skip that for now and only delete the existing recovery partition and add a new one at the end (like Microsoft does).

What a PITA that was! It took me an entire afternoon, since the same Microsoft instructions that I used yesterday successfully on another PC did not work on this PC. DiskPart kept complaining about invalid parameters when trying to format the newly created recovery partition. I think I managed in the end (a.o. by copying WinRE.wim from the Reflect backup because it was nowhere on this PC, even though I had run "reagentc /disable" before deleting the recovery partition) and KB5034441 finally installed successfully.

Since this PC only has a relative small SSD I'd like to regain that 580 MB empty space before the Windows partition, by resizing & moving the Windows partition.

Tips/tricks? (May expert @Brian K can help me out?)

 

I sounds to me, all your problems track to trying to delete the system reserved partition. On UEFI based Win 10 systems , this partition is created at OS installation time to contain UEFI files used by the OS. It is the first partition on the drive and should never be deleted, moved, or tampered with in any way.

Older PC's are BIOS based only and use MBR instead of UEFI. As such, no system reserved partition exist on these devices.

 

This PC has a legacy BIOS and an MBR partition (it's rather old).

 

mbr/bios do not need a recovery partition if the windows partition is created before. so i do, winre is part of drive C here. on my uefi drives there are at least 3 partitions minimum (efi/os/winre)

 

I found this "tidbit" from Microsoft Win 10 RE doucumentation;

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/w...ndows-re--technical-reference?view=windows-10

The above alone is enough to "call out" Microsoft to fix their broken RE updating processing.

-EDIT- Elaborating on the above when Microsoft created the KB5034441 Bitlocker fix, they failed to included the above RE updating processing.

 

I did a repair-install of Windows (ran the ISO from the desktop). Then I find I had two recovery partitions. So now I run Windows Updates and KB5034441 installed successfully, with the new partition of 567 MB.

I used diskpart/cmd to delete the older corrupted partition and turned it into unallocated space. Then I used Aomei Partition Assistant to merge that space with my C drive. Worked perfectly except Disk Management now shows the partition without the "Recovery" title. So I hit Shift and Restart and that took me into the WinRE where I was able to at least get into Command Prompt but clicked thru as I didn't have my password. Tried accessing UEFI and that worked fine, so I think I'm OK now with the WinRE

I don't like having some potential issue somewhere, despite BitLocker not being relevant to me. Thanks for the "experience," Microsoft, it's been real.

Spoiler

 

I wonder what millions of ordinary Win 10 and 11 (non-geek) users will do. These people don't even know what a recovery partition is. MS needs to sort this out on their end, i.e. release a new update.

 

No problem here on four computers running W10 entreprise, i always using diskpart before installing OS, just with the efi, the msr and the primary partition, never created the WinRe one, and KB5034441 installed successfully.

 

"This was absolutely the most helpful post I found on this troublesome KB503441! Following these instructions I easily resized the recovery partition and got the update installed."
https://www.tenforums.com/windows-1...dows-10-21h2-22h2-jan-9-a-34.html#post2600107
------------
With AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro (paid)
https://www.diskpart.com/help/resize-partition.html

 

Absolutely, MiniTool is my go-to for any kind of partitioning job.