Solved My not so amazing family computer

Haydon · Mar 5, 2022

NavyLCDR said:
A Microsoft System Reserved partition has never shown in disk management. You might be confusing the Microsoft System Reserved (MSR) partition present on a GPT disk (which NEVER shows in disk management), with a System Reserved partition on an MBR disk, which is really just a volume label (not a partition type) which a computer boots from in legacy BIOS mode.

You are correct @NavyLCDR the MSR partition is not visible in the Disk Management panel, I saw the MSR partition in the Macrium panel. (I verified that on my test machine. The test machine does not have an OEM Recovery partition, I must have deleted the OEM Recovery partition long time ago, I can't remember)

That said, why do I need an OEM Recovery partition on my family computer? (The family computer is an HP machine)

NavyLCDR · Mar 5, 2022

Haydon said:
That said, why do I need an OEM Recovery partition on my family computer? (The family computer is an HP machine)

You don't absolutely need it there. It serves a couple of purposes:
1. HP specific software to create a recovery USB flash drive will use the OEM factory recovery partition to create it so that the computer specific recovery flash drive will have any HP drivers and software included on it.
2. Recovery procedures (and maybe troubleshooting as well) that are initiated from the computer's firmware (BIOS) will use the OEM recovery partition to re-install the system, again complete with HP specific drivers and software that was included from the factory.

Delete the OEM recovery partition and you lose those two options. Older HP computers used to have a nag screen on computer startup that would tell you the BIOS could not find the OEM recovery partition if you deleted it, and they also used to have a program to recreate it.

zbook · Mar 5, 2022

Were there any reported computer problems?

The EFI partition appears to have been resized.

Otherwise the image was unremarkable.

Haydon · Mar 5, 2022

OK, I removed the drive letter via CLI. I thought if things go wrong, I could do a reset, LOL. But things went well, and I will mark this thread 'Solved'. Thanks to all who responded

glasskuter · Mar 6, 2022

I agree with @Winuser. You have to understand that the partitioning scheme appears different whether one performs a clean install vs an upgrade. There is nothing wrong with your Windows 11 partitions as they are, except for a 21.38 gb partition that is useless unless your think you might want to go back to factory default. But if you want them to appear as they would have with a clean install, you can do one of two things. You can actually do a clean install or backup your system with Macrium, manually repartition your drive using diskpart at boot, and then restore your image by dragging each partition from your image into the newly built partitions.

You are stressing over appearance vs functionality. I suggest leaving your Windows partitions as is until such time a clean install is needed. As far as reclaiming the space of that 21.38 partition, you're not hurting for space so I would delete it and let the space show unallocated in the disk map.

Haydon · Mar 6, 2022

It's all sorted

The OEM Recovery partition on the far right still has its uses as @NavyLCDR explained, so I left it there

cereberus · Mar 6, 2022

Haydon said:
It's all sorted The OEM Recovery partition on the far right still has its uses as @NavyLCDR explained, so I left it there

View attachment 23578

View attachment 23579

The problem is that partition is often inaccessible after a Windows 10 build upgrade as the recovery menus now point to the smaller Recovery partition, instead of the OEM partition. It seems to vary from oem vendor, but I know no way of accessing that once the menus no longer link to it? Maybe somebody else knows?

Some pcs allow you to access this partition by a specified key it seems. I do not think all vendors do this. If so, it is not obvious.

OEM recovery partition

Apart from the recovery partition of Windows, there may be another recovery partition created by the computer manufacturer like Lenovo and Dell that has made their computer comes with an OEM recovery partition consuming about 7 to 20 GB, which contains the WinRE and their factory installation files.

On some computers, the WinRE and the factory installation are separately stored on two partitions, so you may see two OEM partitions on your computer. This OEM partition allows you to press a specified key to boot into Recovery Environment, so you can recover your OS to factory setting without a Windows installation disc. If you have a copy of Windows installation, you can delete this OEM partition to free up more disk space.

zbook · Mar 6, 2022

cereberus said:
The problem is that partition is often inaccessible after a Windows 10 build upgrade as the recovery menus now point to the smaller Recovery partition, instead of the OEM partition. It seems to vary from oem vendor, but I know no way of accessing that once the menus no longer link to it? Maybe somebody else knows?

There should be no issues with the size of the Windows recovery partition during upgrades.
If additional space is needed in the recovery partition during the upgrade the C: partition can shrink by megabytes as long as there is 1 free GB.

Haydon · Mar 6, 2022

This is NOT the family computer that I started this thread with.
---------------
This is my laptop, it is less than 1 year old, came with W10, upgraded to W11 with WU, then I did a clean install. As you can see, it does not have an OEM Recovery partition.

Did I remove the OEM Recovery partition when I did the clean install?

I did not notice any missing drivers or anything else, it just runs great.

NavyLCDR · Mar 6, 2022

Haydon said:
This is NOT the family computer that I started this thread with.
---------------
This is my laptop, it is less than 1 year old, came with W10, upgraded to W11 with WU, then I did a clean install. As you can see, it does not have an OEM Recovery partition.

Did I remove the OEM Recovery partition when I did the clean install?

I did not notice any missing drivers or anything else, it just runs great.

View attachment 23629

It does not look like you did a true clean install. I've never seen a 260 MB EFI System Partition nor a 1000 MB Recovery partition created by Windows 10 or 11 on a completely clean install where you delete all partitions on a disk and select the remaining single unallocated space to install to.

What is the result of:?

Code:

reagentc /info

Mine:

Code:

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22000.493]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>reagentc /info
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:

    Windows RE status:         Enabled
    Windows RE location:       \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk1\partition3\Recovery\WindowsRE
    Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: ca6a9f79-8c33-11ec-9874-2c8db1e3769f
    Recovery image location:
    Recovery image index:      0
    Custom image location:
    Custom image index:        0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.


C:\Windows\system32>

Haydon · Mar 6, 2022

Edit: This is a Lenovo laptop, BTW. I don't remember what the disk partitioning looked like (in particular, I don't remember whether there used to be an OEM Recovery partition or not) This is also the very first time in my life that I ran the reagentc /info cli command.

AddRAM · Mar 6, 2022

@Haydon Hello, If it were my PC and it has been running fine for a long while, I would only delete the small 980 Recovery partition and extend C.
But, you should just leave it be.
Everyone deserves a star in this thread, great work people

And Hayden, if you did a clean install on the newer laptop, and you deleted the entire drive to unallocated space during the install, you may have deleted the factory recovery partition.
Make images and you`ll never miss it.