Windows 10 Recovery issues with winre.wim

Hi all,

i was wondering if anyone can help me with the issue i am having on a tablet i have.
the tablet is a linx7 but there are many about. it has 1gb ram, an z3735 atom and 32gb emmc.

i managed to install a clean version of window 8 pro while wiping the drive. that included the recovery drive which had the wimboot files. i then did a windows 10 upgrade.

after the 10 upgrade, i did a "normal" clean 10 install but never connected to the internet. i didnt want to activate and wanted to test a few things. after i was happy with 10 and it's performance on this device, i wanted to try create a wimboot for the device. i couldn't find a guide for "dummies" but eventually found and followed this guide(cant post links).

Code:

instructables.com/id/How-to-Create-a-Wimboot-Installation-of-Windows-81/?ALLSTEPS

i changed a few things though. for the install i used a 10.iso and added all the drivers i needed. this is so touch would work during install/set up/when i want to reset the pc.
also rather than doing the image set up in a virtual pc, i used the actual tablet.
during the procedure, i noticed i did not have winre.wim in the system32/recovery directory. a quick search said not to worry and that i can extract winre.wim from boot.wim. i followed the guide and ran the relevant dism commands and had a dumo of winre.wim in the folder i had assigned it to.
everything went smooth after that.
i activated my image and did the relvant updates while in sysprep.
once the system rebooted, i did another reboot before sealing the image and running oobe.
i then captured the image.
wiped the emmc on the device.
set up the partitions, dumped the images onto the recovery drive i just created. instead of using the folder "sources" i used the name "images"

i registered the recovery environment as instructed

Code:

W:\Windows\System32\reagentc /setreimage /path R:\Images /target W:\Windows

once completed i did a reboot.
was extremly happy that everything was working as planed, or so i thought.
only used 2.8 GB for the install and recovery partition i created was 4GB (only required 3.4gb)

now after the set up, i went into settings, update & security, reovery.
i click get started below "reset this pc"
i then click remove everything.after a few seconds, i get an error messege that it could not find the recovery environment.
it asks me to insert my windows installation or recovery media.
a bit gutted as i never had to when it arrived with 8.1. i understand it had to in 8.1 pro as i didn't have the files on the drive.
i checked under advanced start up and sadly no recovery options there either.

so i tried to investigage and opened reagent.xml in c:\windows\system32\recovery\

it has the correct imagelocation path, i.e."\Images"

i dont work in IT and just try learn stuff as a hobby. the guys here always teach me useful things

thanks for any help in advance.

 

Thanks for the reply ColdZero.
any idea how i can go about making it a "compact" install then?
if i did a normal install, recovery works fine with 10 actually. it resets. but its taking up a lot of space in comparison to a wimboot install.

after a lot of trial and error i have managed to get wimboot to work though.
i hope that this might help someone who tries something similar.

disclaimer?

Code:

i would like to say i am not an expert but i like learning new things and play around with computers a lot. what ever you do with your device, you decided to do it

Tools before i started

Code:

Hirenboot CD on a usb - i know, it doesn't work with uefi
windows 10 usb
wireless keyboard and mouse (k400)
a usb hub
on the go cable
a usb with a image capture i created after activating in sysprep

i booted from win10 usb and installed 10 again.
i didn't connect to the internet or anything. setup was finished and i was at the desktop.
i rebooted device and selected my windows 10 usb again.
i pressed shift + f10. this opened a command promt window on top of the setup.
i did diskpart, list volume. this was to see what was mounted and where. i made a note of this. then exit diskpart
i typed in D:\hbcdmenu.cmd to open hirenboot cd menu which was mounted on. i used the partition tool on this.
i deleted c completly and moved the system partition and then enlarged the recovery partition to 4096MB. i knew after i put my captured image in this partition i would still have some room to spare-i could have made it 3.5gb but thought it was best i leave it to 4gb.
i did a reboot, back into the windows 10 usb and again shift f10.
did a diskpart, select volume 0 (which was were c:\ was mounted) and format quick fs=ntfs label="win10"
assigned a letter to it. then i selected the recovery parition which was now 4gb.
i copied over my install.wim into a newly created folder called win_image using robocopy command.
then applied the install image using dism apply-image command from the recovery drive to the c drive.
i then opened hirenboot cd again looking for notepad++
i changed the location values off reagent.xlm on the recovery partition and on the system32/recovery.

i restarted the device and windows started to initial setup (screen where you add user name etc)
after windows logged in, i did a system, recovery, reset pc. and to my suprise it worked.

my conclusion is i'm not setting up reagent.xlm properly if i do it the correct way, or i'm not setting up the boot parameters properly.

i will play around with it more despite it working for me. heck i like learning thats why

peace and love to all at MDL