Hidden recovery partition showing in 'This PC' after reinstalling IRST drivers

Hi, I was trying different IRST drivers on my recently fresh install of windows 11to see if I could see if one was better.

I then kept getting an error during the installations of the drivers saying unable to inject the driver into the recovery partition, and that the installation is fine, but recommends I do this in case of a system failure.

I now seem to be getting that message every time, and since I can see the recovery partition listed in 'This PC', which is usually hidden.

Is there any way to fix this, so that it's hidden again?

I have tried uninstalling the drivers, and ticking uninstall software as well.

Regards
James

james_uk said:

I can see the recovery partition listed in 'This PC', which is usually hidden

Click to expand...

Does it have a drive letter assigned to it? If it does, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free to remove the drive letter.

james_uk said:

I was trying different IRST drivers on my recently fresh install of windows 11to see if I could see if one was better.

Click to expand...

Why would you do that?
If one has the correct IRST driver for his hardware, attempting to use other IRST drivers NOT designed for your hardware can cause issues and will not perform better.
IRST is no different than any other driver, it's hardware specific. In your case per the Asus support page it says you should be using
Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology Driver V19.5.7.1058 for Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 11 64-bit.(WHQL)

Version 19.5.7.1058

25.58 MB

2024/01/02

james_uk said:

Is there any way to fix this, so that it's hidden again?

Click to expand...

First, we need to identify what drive and partition the Recovery Partition resides on. To do so, simply run "reagentc /info" from an elevated command prompt and note where that partition is located:



From the above example, note that my Recovery Partition is located on disk 1, partition 4.

Run "diskpart". Select that drive and partition like this (use the correct drive number and partition number for your system):



Now, remove the drive letter by issuing the "remove" command. Note that this removes the drive letter, making that partition hidden again. It will not harm the functionality of the recovery partition, since it normally would not have a drive letter.



You can now exit from diskpart by issuing an "exit" command.

NOTE: You may think that you can remove the drive letter by simply going into Disk Management and removing it there. Unfortunately, Disk Management will not allow you to change the drive letter for the Recovery Partition, so it needs to be done using diskpart.

Hi, i went ahead and used the software scott mentioned in post 2, i took the drive letter off and set it to hidden, which seems to have worked.

Stupidly, while in the software I have seen the 16mb space without thinking any more about it, and decided to try and allocate the space back to the normal drive. (I don't know why I thought that would be a good idea)

Anyway, it doesn't seem to have harmed my system as such, but now that 16mb space is just showing as unallocated, and have since read windows uses this when it's doing some updates?
As shown below, this space is also showing as unallocated in disk management now as well, which it wasn't prior.


Is this something I should fix, or won't really matter?
If I should fix it, does anyone know how I would do that please?

I am sorry I started doing stuff I didn't know, I should have stuck to the one thing I set out to do, which did work.

Regards
James

It really does not matter as that partition IS NOT used. You can create an MSR partition but it is rather pointless.

Houston, we have a problem!

That unallocated space almost looks like the MSR (Microsoft Reserved Partition). It is way too small to have been a recovery partition.

Besides, I see your recovery partition at the end of the drive (the 775 MB partition).

I would have to research this further. Not sure offhand what the effect of whacking the MSR is.

In the meantime, please do this:

Run diskpart.

In diskpart, run these commands:

select disk 0
list partition

Grab the output and post it here.

Exit from diskpart by running the command "exit".

I think I know how to recovery from this pretty easily, just want to see that output first.

cereberus said:

It really does not matter as that partition IS NOT used. You can create an MSR partition but it is rather pointless.

Click to expand...

Ah, thanks for addressing this. Was not sure if the MSR missing would be a bad thing. In that case, please ignore my last post asking for diskpart info.

If you would prefer to recreate that MSR partition, this should work:

Run diskpart
Issue these commands:

select disk 0
create partition msr
exit

Have not tried this myself, but see no reason it should not work.

Thank you, I have just given that a go and the 16mb unallocated space in disk management has disappeared, so it must have worked.

Thanks all for the help!

Woo Hoo! Glad to hear it.

Please run:

Admin command prompt:

manage-bde -status
reagentc /info
diskpart
lis dis
lis vol
sel dis 0
lis par

Post a share link

Hi Zbook, i will paste it below.

PS C:\Users\James> manage-bde -status
BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.22621
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Disk volumes that can be protected with
BitLocker Drive Encryption:
Volume C: []
[OS Volume]

Size: 1489.54 GB
BitLocker Version: 2.0
Conversion Status: Used Space Only Encrypted
Percentage Encrypted: 100.0%
Encryption Method: XTS-AES 128
Protection Status: Protection On
Lock Status: Unlocked
Identification Field: Unknown
Key Protectors:
Numerical Password
TPM

PS C:\Users\James> reagentc /info
REAGENTC.EXE: Operation failed: 3

REAGENTC.EXE: An error has occurred.

PS C:\Users\James> diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.22621.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DESKTOP-1J2NLGQ

DISKPART> lis dis

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 1863 GB 372 GB *

DISKPART> lis vol

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 C NTFS Partition 1489 GB Healthy Boot
Volume 1 FAT32 Partition 100 MB Healthy System
Volume 2 NTFS Partition 775 MB Healthy Hidden

DISKPART> sel dis 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> lis par

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 System 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Reserved 16 MB 101 MB
Partition 3 Primary 1489 GB 117 MB
Partition 4 Recovery 775 MB 1862 GB

Please run disk partition information > post a share link

james_uk said:

PS C:\Users\James> reagentc /info
REAGENTC.EXE: Operation failed: 3

REAGENTC.EXE: An error has occurred.

Click to expand...

The error code 3 here means that the specified path was not found.

james_uk said:

DISKPART> sel dis 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> lis par

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 System 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Reserved 16 MB 101 MB
Partition 3 Primary 1489 GB 117 MB
Partition 4 Recovery 775 MB 1862 GB

Click to expand...

This indicates that your Recovery partition is Partition 4 on Disk 0.

So, this command should fix the error:
reagentc /setreimage /path \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE
Please post the output of the command. If it reports that the operation was successful, you may still need to reboot for this change to take effect, and, next, try reagentc /info again to see if the error is gone so that, if it reports disabled, you should then finally be able to run reagentc /enable to re-enable it again.

EDIT: to get the reagentc /setreimage command mentioned above to work correctly, you might also need to run the command
del C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml first.

EDIT2: also be aware that the mechanism that Windows Update uses to automatically update WinRE was changed by Microsoft a little over a year ago so nowadays you need to make sure that the recovery partition has got enough available free space or else it might fail to update. KB5028997: Instructions to manually resize your partition to install the WinRE update - Microsoft Support

EDIT3: more about that here: UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions

EDIT4: also note where it says, "The recovery image, winre.wim, is typically between 500-700MB, depending on what drivers, languages, and customizations you add." there's a customization that has been added by Asus. It's this one here: MyASUS in WinRE | ASUS Global When I was browsing through my event logs with Event Viewer on my Asus TUF Gaming F16 (2024) laptop, I soon found that it had indeed failed to automatically update WinRE. So, I went ahead and enlarged the partition. Next, these errors in the event log stopped coming.

Hi, I have just tried this and just get an error, i tried the del command you mentioned i might have to try first, then the first command still failed as shown below.

Will doing a reinstall of windows, where i dont lose any files or apps sort this issue also, or wouldn't that correct it?

When available update the progress with post #14.


Please run:

Admin command prompt:

dir c:\windows\system32\recovery /a

Post a share link.

zbook said:

When available update the progress with post #14.


Please run:

Admin command prompt:

dir c:\windows\system32\recovery /a

Post a share link.

Click to expand...

Hey, just ran them.

I have attached file for Diskparinfo

When running dir c:\windows\system32\recovery /a i get the following:

C:\Windows\System32>dir c:\windows\system32\recovery /a
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is BEBA-739A

Directory of c:\windows\system32\recovery

17/07/2024 07:28 <DIR> .
17/07/2024 07:36 <DIR> ..
17/07/2024 07:28 1,040 ReAgent.xml
1 File(s) 1,040 bytes
2 Dir(s) 1,517,363,941,376 bytes free

looking back at the things i have tried above, theres one thing I am a little confused about, in HDMI's post you mentioned the recovery partition being number 4, which is that 775mb partition
But wasn't it that 16mb msr partition, which is partition 2, we were trying to fix after i deleted it by mistake?
Or is the above just all part of issues that have been seen in the logs i have shown?

If the next steps dont work, would doing a reinstall of windows only (so i dont lose files or installed programs) re-configure the recovery and MSR partitions?

Because I have not long put windows on this new ssd, i today was looking at the software that come with it and enabled the over provisioning, so disk management looks slightly different now as i will show below.

So the 372gb unallocated space is that.



And using disk genius, this is how is currently looks in there, not sure if this is helpful or not.