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Re: Win10 Recovery Partitions

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2015 6:31 pm
by TeraByte Support(PP)
Are you wanting to keep the System Reserved partition (separate booting partition)? You would end up with the 450MB partition and the Windows partition. Or do you want to get rid of both the extra partitions and end up with just the Windows partition? Either way should work, but the instructions would be different.

Re: Win10 Recovery Partitions

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2015 6:56 pm
by Scott
I was wanting to get rid of the 350-MB partition and end up with only the 450-MB partition and the Windows partition. My assumption (keeping in mind the first 3 letters of that word) was that the 350-MB partition was useless; just a remnant of Win8.1.

Re: Win10 Recovery Partitions

Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2015 10:59 pm
by TeraByte Support(PP)
I assume you have a backup image of the entire drive in case you want/need to start over easily.

The procedure would be very similar to removing the System Reserved partition (KB: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=409), except that you would be placing the booting files onto the 450MB Recovery partition and setting it active instead of the Windows partition. It would be a good idea to read through the article so you have an idea of how it works.

The procedure would be as follows:

1. Boot into Windows 10.

2. Open Disk Management and assign a drive letter to the 350MB partition and to the 450MB partition. Note the letters as they will be used later. In these instructions I will use E: for the 350MB partition and R: for the 450MB partition.

3. Start an Administrator Command Prompt.

4. Disable WinRE. Run the following command:
reagentc /disable
After running the command, the winre.wim file should be in the C:\Windows\System32\Recovery folder (hidden folder and file).

5. Unload the BCD hive. Run the following command:
reg unload HKLM\BCD00000000

6. Copy bootmgr to new booting partition (R:). Run:
robocopy e:\ r:\ bootmgr

7. Copy the Boot folder to the new booting partition. Run:
robocopy e:\Boot r:\Boot /s

8. Update the BCD to reference the new booting partition. Run the following two commands:
bcdedit /store r:\boot\bcd /set {bootmgr} device partition=R:
bcdedit /store r:\boot\bcd /set {memdiag} device partition=R:

9. Close the Command Prompt window.

10. Open Disk Management and remove the drive letter assignments from E: and R:. Right-click on the 450MB partition and select "Mark Partition as Active" from the menu.

11. Windows should now boot from the 450MB partition. You can reboot and check if it works. Disk Management should tag the partition as (System, Active).

12. At this point you can delete the 350MB partition. You can also enable WinRE by running the following command from an Administrator Command Prompt:
reagentc /enable

13. If you slide the Windows partition into the free space you may need to update the BCD (a boot repair or you can use BIBM if you have it).

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Another option that is easier (if you don't care if WinRE ends up on the Windows partition) would be to keep the 350MB booting partition and remove the 450MB partition. For example:

1. Boot into Windows 10.

2. Open an Administrator Command Prompt.

3. Disable WinRE. Run:
reagentc /disable

4. Delete the 450MB partition. Expand the Windows partition to use the space.

5. Enable WinRE. Run:
reagentc /enable

Re: Win10 Recovery Partitions

Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2015 12:59 am
by Scott
Thank you very much, Paul. I raise my glass to you. Much appreciated.

Sidenote: It's necessary to use diskpart to assign the drive letters.