Info Why Windows install didn't configure Recovery Partition (Lenovo Recovery media)

[onespeedbiker]

I have several Thinkpads, including X270, X280 and T480 (the X280 and T480 are recent acquisitions because my other Thinkpads are not Windows 11 compliant). I use the recovery media I downloaded from Lenovo and the X280 and T480 upgraded to Windows 11. I noticed all my Windows 10 computers and X280 errored with the dreaded KB5034441 WinRE update, but the T480 did not. I discovered that the computers that errored out did not have properly configured Recovery Partition and were lacking WinRE.wim in the Recovery folder; the Reagentc command could not enable the Recovery Partition.

The only difference was the T480 had a m2 NVME SSD when I loaded the recovery media and the others did not, rather with both the X270 and X280, I loaded the recovery media to a SATA drive and then upgraded to a NVME SSD by cloning to the new drive. So this morning I reloaded the recovery media onto both the X270 and X280 (which have NVME SSD now installed) and sure enough both the recovery Partitions show Reagentc enabled. I don't know if this also occurs with MS installers but it does with Lenovo.

 

[Colif]

I don't know enough about Reagentc to explain why it might react differently on a sata drive compared to an nvme.
It might be a feature of the lenovo recovery drive.

 

[onespeedbiker]

Interestingly enough I can still access the Windows Recovery Environment on the Windows 10 machines where Reagentc is non-functional (IOW they have a functioning Recovery Partition) it's just the K85034441 update requires Reagentc to be enabled to update. I thought at one point the cloning could have been responsible, but that wouldn't explain the lack of the WinRe.wim file in the Recovery folder.