Windows 10: Add Recovery Partition to Windows 10 Boot Menu?

If I assign a drive letter to my recovery partition, can I then also create a boot menu entry for that partition? Macrium is perfectly happy to create and assign space for its recovery partition, and create a BCD entry for same so it shows up on the boot menu. That's got me wondering if the same thing is possible for the recovery partition that the Windows installer creates by default when Windows 10 is clean installed. Happy to hear instructions, suggestions, or disadvantages to this approach. Thanks!
--Ed--

:)

 

Bootable Partition Recovery

I finally figured it out. It seems that the Windows 10 re-install somehow un-marked the Windows 7 partition as an active partition. Once I marked the Windows 7 partition as active, then the Windows install disk's recovery tools (I actually do not remember
whether it was 7 or 10) were able to find the Windows 7 partition and add it to the Windows 10 boot configuration data. Now I can dual boot both operating systems.

 

Windows 10 installation overwrote 8.1 recovery partition, then failed.

AV's may need the special uninstaller to fully uninstall. This is a known issue interfering with the Upgrade.

Others are finding the Windows 8.1 installation ISO fine at the link I provided.

What does
Installing Windows 10 using the media creation tool - Windows Help have to do with a Recovery partition? It offers to let you do the in-place Upgrade just by ticking a box and then waiting for the download, or by choosing "for another PC" you can download
a permanent copy of the installation media written by the same tool to a Flash stick, or use the ISO choice to burn to DVD using ImgBurn at 4x speed.

The first link to
Boot Recovery Partition using EasyBCD was a workaround I posted at my old home Seven Forums about how to use EasyBCD to add an abandoned Recovery partition to a Dual Boot menu for the purpose of booting it to Factory Recovery. If you're not getting the
post I wrote there, then here it is:

"Recovery loses it's hotlink to F8 during reinstall. You can try to
Mark Recovery Partition Active then reboot to see if Recovery partition will boot on its own. This is what the F8 hotkey does.


If not you can create a boot manager to boot Recovery:

First give Recovery partition a drive letter in Disk Mgmt:
Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

Then install EasyBCD boot manager, click on Add OS Entry tab, select WinPPE tab, browse in Recovery folder to boot.wim or winre.wim after unhiding System and Hidden files in Control Panel>Folder options>View tab, Save boot entry. Reboot to dual Boot menu,
choose RAMdisk to boot recovery.

EasyBCD (free Download at bottom of page - no name or email required)

Accessing my restore partition"

 

Yes, you can. I just tried it. I used MiniTool Partition Wizard and EasyBCD.

In MiniTool Partition Wizard, assign a drive letter to your recovery partition. I used X:. Also use the explore feature to find the .wim file in the recovery partition. My path was \Recovery\WinodwsRE\Winre.wim.

Then I used EasyBCD to a new WinPE entry. I manually entered the path to the .wim file: X:\Recovery\WinodwsRE\Winre.wim

Then I removed the drive letter again from the recovery partition in MiniTool Partition Wizard.

I don't know if there is any advantage to this or not, but that's one way you can do it.

From EasyBCD:

There are a total of 3 entries listed in the bootloader.

Default: Windows 10 Pro
Timeout: 3 seconds
EasyBCD Boot Device: R:\

Entry #1
Name: Windows 10 Pro
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \WINDOWS\system32\winload.efi

Entry #2
Name: Windows 10 Home
BCD ID: {fcaab809-8717-11e6-843d-aa73efa5da58}
Drive: E:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.efi

Entry #3
Name: Recovery
BCD ID: {fcaab814-8717-11e6-843d-aa73efa5da58}
Device: [\Device\HarddiskVolume1]\Recovery\WindowsRE\Winre.wim
Bootloader Path: \Windows\System32\Boot\winload.efi

 

Thanks, NavyLCDR! I was planning to try it out this weekend but you beat me to the punch. You realize this also means you can create a partition, mark it active, and put Kyhi's recovery environment on it, and so forth. Doesn't help if the drive goes kablooey, but most of my Windows booting problems are self-inflicted and if I have ready (and fast) access to a good recovery environment it will speed up triage! PLUS: it's the best argument I've thought of so far for buying a BIGGER boot SSD ("But Honey! I have to be able to recover when I shoot myself in the foot...).
Thanks again,
--Ed--

 

I did that a long time ago, except I have UEFI computers so there is no active partition. I created a 5GB partition at the end of my hard drive. I extracted a standard Windows 10 installation ISO file to it. I replaced boot.wim in the \Sources folder with the boot.wim file from Kyhi's recovery tools. Then added that boot.wim file to the boot menu.

As you stated, that way when I screw up my Windows installation to the point it won't boot, I can boot into Kyhi's recovery tools and either restore a Macrium Reflect backup image, or re-install Windows with a clean install. I can also run setup.exe from that partition from inside my running Windows 10 to do an "in place upgrade" repair install.

Finally, when the new Creator's Edition upgrade comes out in April, the way I will install that is to extract the ISO file to my custom recovery partition (have to replace Kyhi's boot.wim file again), and run setup.exe from there for that.

One more thing too, this also puts Kyhi's Recovery Tools as an option in my UEFI firmware boot menu, so even if I manage to wipe out my system partition, I think and hope I would still be able to boot into recovery stored on the hard drive. I'm going to get adventurous and try that next. Delete my EFI system partition and see if I can still boot into Kyhi's recovery stored on my hard drive to restore it from a backup image.

 

Awesome: I think I need to try that, too. Thanks one more time.
--Ed--

 

So I just tried it.

Deleted the EFI System Partition. Computer booted into Kyhi's recovery tools automatically on next boot.
Used Macrium Reflect Free to restore the EFI system partition. Computer rebooted into Kyhi's recovery tools again.
Rebooted the computer into UEFI setup and I had to move Windows Boot Manager back to the top of the boot list.
Computer rebooted back into my normal Windows boot menu!

 

I just run a 60gb mSata (same speed as Samsung Evo but under half the price *Wink ) as my OS & all my files are up in one drive & backed up to usb dongle every month then every year I make a cd copy of my yearly backups for archive then delete last years saves of my memory stick myself, if I have any big projects to do I use my 240gb ssd which is on a power switch so stays off most of the time.

The switching allows me to have multiple OS systems on the same PC without spreading viruses ect als I can seperate my game drives.





I only have the OS switched on as in picture right now.

 

Hey @NavyLCDR: when you set up the WinPE entry in EasyBCD, did you pick the default WIM Image (Ramdisk) option or did you go for the Extracted filesystem layout option. I could see this going either way, depending on how it's loaded. Just curious to know what you chose, because yours is already working. I can always try the experimental method, I know, but I figured I'd ask you first.
Also did you check the "EMS Enabled" checkbox or not for that one?
Thanks,
--Ed--

[Note: tried the experimental method. Works fine using the WIM Image (Ramdisk) approach. I didn't check the EMS checkbox, either. Thanks for the great guidance. You should do a tutorial on it. Lots of people could benefit from this.]

 

Default ramdisk without EMS checked.

 

The recovery partition can be on another drive, right? That would eliminate the possibility of the boot drive leaving you bootless (so to speak).

 

A custom recovery partition with Kyhi's boot.wim file can be on another drive (mine is). I'm not sure about moving the standard Windows 10 recovery partition to another drive, though. It probably wouldn't matter setting it up in the boot menu, but not sure about setting it for Windows native use using the reagentc command.

 

Acronis does this you dont want it in the boot menu as that often is the problem acronis puts it pre boot with a hot key like oems recovery

 

I meant using Kyhi's boot.wim.

Think I'll give it a try.

Thanks