KB5034441 more than just partition size

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There may be more shortcomings to installing KB5034441 than just needing a larger Windows Recovery partition. The install for me kept failing even after I had increased the Windows Recovery partition to 2GB.

What finally worked for me was getting a fresh vanilla copy of Winre.wim and ReAgent.xml from a matching Windows 10 22H2 64bit ISO and using those to recreate my Windows 10 Recovery Partition.

I had begun to suspect the customization DELL had initially done for the Windows Recovery environment was not being handled by KB5034441. So I reverted to a vanilla (non-customized) WinRE and then KB5034441 installed successfully.

There had been suspicions online from folks who suspected more than partition size, so that got me thinking of what else might cause problems for KB5034441. Oh sure, now I have lost the option to go back to the factory install, but that was years ago and never going to happen.

I had also suspected the Overprovisioning space reserved by Samsung Magician so I freed that up, but the real solution was to go to a non-customized WinRE.

I could have just left KB5034441 hidden, but I liked the challenge.

Hope this experience might help others.

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Perito, Rob Kay, jburk07, sheldon, windbg, snissen, NaNoNyMouse

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Can you still boot into the RE?

cheers, Paul

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Yes, after I created the non-customized vanilla Recovery Environment, I checked the ability to boot into the Recovery Environment both before KB5034441 installed and also after KB5034441 installed (I held Shift when I clicked on Restart). Works both ways and looks like what a clean install of Windows 10 provides.

By giving up the customized RE, I lost the ability to restore to the DELL factory image of many years ago. Can’t remember if DELL had added anything else.

I don’t really go into the Recovery Environment these days as I depend almost entirely on disk image backups, so getting KB5034441 to install was more of a learning and puzzle solving for fun exercise.

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Coldheart9020, wavy, sheldon, windbg, PL1, TechTango

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Yeah my Recovery Partition is 530MB. 100% reporting free. Windows 10 22H2 all updates applied except KB5034441. This is self-built PC, no special or custom OEM partitions, just the ones created by SETUP when I installed Windows 10. This update still errors out after multiple attempts. There has to be something more at work besides the size and free space of this Recovery Partition.

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Tim wrote:

Yeah my Recovery Partition is 530MB. 100% reporting free.

First, Disk Management won’t give you information on a hidden or system partition; it will always report 100% free.  To see used/free space, you need to open an elevated Command Prompt, then diskpart, assign a drive letter to the Recovery Partition, then open File Explorer (or Disk Management) to see the free space.

Second, even if you have sufficient free space, the Recovery Environment must be enabled.  In an elevated Command Prompt, type

reagentc /info

and hit Enter.  That will tell you if it is enabled/disabled.  If it is disabled, type

reagentc /enable

and hit Enter.  If you have a capable Recovery Environment, that command will enable it.  If you don’t have a capable Recovery Environment, it will need to be repaired.  See WinRE for more info.

If you have enough free space and WindowsRE doesn’t need to be repaired, or if you don’t want to proceed any farther after determining free space in that partition, just get back into diskpart from within an elevated Command Prompt and remove the drive letter that you had assigned.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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First, Disk Management won’t give you information on a hidden or system partition; it will always report 100% free.

Wow thanks for that. So I was right, the problem was more than just free space in Recovery Partition, as in PEBKAC. HA! I was unaware Disk Management was not reporting free space correctly.

I tried AOEMI free partition assistant and seemed to report everything correctly. There was 89MB free space. AOMEI allowed me to resize the partition to 730MB from 530MB. Good thing I always leave some space unallocated at the end of my drives.

But here is kicker, AFTER the update applied successfully, it is only utilizing 42MB more than before! There was plenty of free space the way it was. Oh boy!

Thanks again!

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I don’t think the recovery partition can be empty. I had to extract Install.ESD from a new ISO of Windows 10 and convert it to install.wim. Then, I had to extract the proper WinRE.wim file, corresponding to the version of Windows that I had and also the ReAgent.xml file. Then I had to figure which partition to put them into (I had several recovery partitions), and I had to activate it. I did manage to get KB5034441 to install after that. Here are some references:

https://www.wintips.org/how-to-extract-install-esd-to-install-wim-windows-10-8/

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-download-winrewim/e4ea068c-590a-4c8d-8498-1d79cbec1acc

https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/172567-how-recreate-windows-recovery-partition.html

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windbg

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Tim wrote:

But here is kicker, AFTER the update applied successfully, it is only utilizing 42MB more than before! There was plenty of free space the way it was. Oh boy!

I believe the way that MS is installing the patch, it needs twice the size of the original file to accommodate both versions, the original and the update,  in the current partition. If they chose another partition with available free space, it would not have needed more room. (There have been so many threads on this topic that I’m not even sure where I saw this.)

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bbearren wrote:

you need to open an elevated Command Prompt, then diskpart, assign a drive letter to the Recovery Partition

This is bad practice IMO. It is hidden for a good reason.

Read this thread for a better method.
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/powershell-script-to-test-partition-sizes/

cheers, Paul

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Paul T wrote:

This is bad practice IMO. It is hidden for a good reason.

While it isn’t totally harmless, assigning a drive letter only makes it visible.  The contents are still hidden.  If you click on a folder within the WindowsRE in File Explorer, you will be told that you don’t have permission to view that folder; even invoking Administrator privileges won’t allow access to contents of the WindowsRE partition in File Explorer.

I’ve edited my post #2632500 to include removing the drive letter after determining the partitions free space and/or repairing WindowsRE.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

1 user thanked author for this post.

satrow

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Well maybe another issue or not? After the partition adjustment, in Disk Management, the partition is no longer tagged/ident as Recovery Partition as it was displaying before. It is just blank in terms of any ident or label. Using the reagentc /info reports enabled and consistent with everything reported before. I used /enable just to be sure and it reported successful.

Just cosmetic?

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sadly KB5034441 can also break network shares.

the work around is:

Press Windows + R to open a Run dialog box, and type “\\＜NAS address=”” ip=””＞“ to view your NAS in Windows 10 File Explorer. Map NAS shared folders as network drives on your Windows system

Stephen Yarrow (Uncle Bulgaria)
Happly retired IT professional

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Are you sure about this?
Do you have a link with details?

cheers, Paul

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castiel

Wanted to thank you for that bit of info. After:
1) downloading the 22H2 version of Win 10 iso from Microsoft and extracting the Winre.wim and the ReAgent.xml file
2) disabling Windows Re
3) replacing the existing file in the Recovery folder with the extracted files
4) then re-enabling Windows Re
the update ran without any issues. Again, thank you!!

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Update.

Had same update issue on another windows 10 machine (which had been updated to version 22H2). After using the procedures outlined in earlier post WITHOUT increasing size of Recovery partition (still at 499MB), update ran successfully.

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