Background

I faced issues in installing the latest Windows Update KB5034441. Am penning down the steps to hopefully save others some time in debugging and figuring things out

High level info

1. WinRE seems to need at least 750MB or more volume size in order to successfully install the Windows update. (YMMV!)

   • This differ from the official documentation that state 250MB

2. If your existing recovery partition don't meet the volume size, you may need to shrink volume from your primary volume

1. In order to allocate the unallocated size to the existing recovery partition, you will have to delete and recreate the recovery partition.

   • Unfortunately, you cannot choose to extend the volume size

   • Please do perform a backup of your files and folders as it may cause unexpected behaviours

1. Please note that the commands that need to be executed requires Administrator Access

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Remediation Steps

1. Open Command Prompt, running as Administrator

2. Start up the following tools/windows via Command Prompt

# Open Disk Management
diskmgmt.msc

# Open File Explorer at C:\Windows\System32\Recovery
start "C:\Windows\System32\Recovery"

1. Check for the disk and partition index of WinRE location

   • Refer to Windows RE location and look out for harddisk and partition

   • In this case, the disk index is 0 and partition index is 4

reagentc /info

# Sample output
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:

    Windows RE status:         Enabled
    Windows RE location:       \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE
    Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: 281cb1e0-0820-11ee-b44e-f71b12ef13b1
    Recovery image location:
    Recovery image index:      0
    Custom image location:
    Custom image index:        0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

1. Disable WinRE before proceeding

reagent /disable

1. Start diskpart to delete the existing recovery partition AND create a new recovery partition

   • Steps are referenced from Microsoft KB5028997

# Check list of disks, check if disk is GPT or MBR
list disk

# Select target disk part on the disk index as found in step 3
sel disk <INDEX>

# Check list of partitions
list part

# Select target partition disk as found in step 3
sel part <INDEX>

# Delete existing partition
delete partition override

# Create a new recovery partition
## a. For GPT partition
create partition primary id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac
gpt attributes =0x8000000000000001

## b. For MBR, run 
create partition primary id=27

# Format the partition
format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows RE tools"

# Confirm that the WinRE partition is created
list vol

# Exit diskpart
exit

1. Enable WinRE

reagentc /enable

1. In the event you face REAGENTC.EXE: The Windows RE image was not found, proceed to the next section for recovery steps

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Recovery Steps

1. Follow the steps in Resource #3 to download the Windows ISO file and Resource #4 to extract the winre.wim file

2. Copy the winre.wim file into C:\Windows\System32\Recovery folder

3. Attempt to enable WinRE

reagentc /enable

1. If the error persists, set the Windows RE location path with the following command

reagentc /setreimage /paath "C:\Windows\System32\Recovery"
reagentc /enable

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Conclusion

Got to learn a few tips and tricks while figuring out the manual remediation for this Windows update. Hopefully this will save myself some time the next time something similar occurs again.

Till the next time, cheers!

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Resources

Here are some of the links I reference to resolve the installation of Windows Update KB5034441

1. Official Microsoft Documentation on KB5034441

2. Deleting recovery partition

3. Downloading multi-media Windows ISO on Windows laptop

4. Extracing install.wim and winre.wim