I have been fighting with REAgentC to allow me to install the WinRE image to the system partition (8).
I have gone through numerous errors like »the product has been uninstalled«, »there is insufficient space on the device«, »the operation cannot be completed due to a file system limitation« and the pair of »cannot find the file/path specified« or »file cannot be created because it exists«.
I think the »cannot be created« error was the result of copying an existing boot.sdi ramdisk along with the winre.wim. This is wrong, REAgentC creates the ramdisk.
One thing I've noticed is that at least on an MBR disk, an NTFS partition is required in order to successfully enable WinRE on the system partition. If it's FAT32, I got misleading errors about »insufficient space« until I enlarged it, which then told me it could not complete the operation due to »file system limitations.«
If REAgentC is confused by the current contents of %systemroot%\System32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml, replace by a blank file:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<WindowsRE version="1.0">
<WinreBCD id=""/>
<WinreLocation path="" id="0" offset="0"/>
<ImageLocation path="" id="0" offset="0"/>
<OsInstallLocation path="" id="0" offset="0"/>
<InstallState state="0"/>
<OsInstallAvailable state="0"/>
<WinREStaged state="0"/>
<OperationParam path=""/>
<OsBuildVersion path=""/>
<OemTool state="0"/>
<BootKey state="0"/>
<IsServer state="0"/>
<ScheduledOperation state="4"/>
</WindowsRE>
With the recovery partition on R:, the commands
md r:\Recovery\WindowsRE
xcopy /h %systemroot%\System32\Recovery\winre.wim r:\Recovery\WindowsRE
reagentc /setreimage /path R:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target %systemroot%
reagentc /enable
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<WindowsRE version="1.0">
<WinreBCD id="{30f4463f-add1-11e4-97b2-e8db73286102}"/>
<WinreLocation path="\Recovery\WindowsRE" id="196858822" offset="1048576" guid="{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}"/>
<ImageLocation path="\Recovery\WindowsRE" id="196858822" offset="1048576" guid="{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}"/>
<OsInstallLocation path="" id="0" offset="0" guid="{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}"/>
<InstallState state="1"/>
<OsInstallAvailable state="0"/>
<WinREStaged state="0"/>
<OperationParam path=""/>
<OsBuildVersion path="7601.18700.amd64fre.win7sp1_gdr.141211-1742"/>
<OemTool state="0"/>
<BootKey state="0"/>
<IsServer state="0"/>
<ScheduledOperation state="4"/>
</WindowsRE>
Note that it's apparently impossible to issue the »/enable« command from Recovery Environment because it doesn't support the »/target« switch.
And here are the relevant boot loader entries created by REAgentC for this case:
Windows-Start-Manager
---------------------
Bezeichner {bootmgr}
device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1
description Windows Boot Manager
locale de-de
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {30f44639-add1-11e4-97b2-e8db73286102}
displayorder {current}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30
Windows-Startladeprogramm
-------------------------
Bezeichner {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7
locale de-de
inherit {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence {30f4463f-add1-11e4-97b2-e8db73286102}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {30f44639-add1-11e4-97b2-e8db73286102}
nx OptIn
detecthal Yes
Windows-Startladeprogramm
-------------------------
Bezeichner {30f4463f-add1-11e4-97b2-e8db73286102}
device ramdisk=[\Device\HarddiskVolume1]\Recovery\WindowsRE\Winre.wim,{30f44640-add1-11e4-97b2-e8db73286102}
path \windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows Recovery Environment
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice ramdisk=[\Device\HarddiskVolume1]\Recovery\WindowsRE\Winre.wim,{30f44640-add1-11e4-97b2-e8db73286102}
systemroot \windows
nx OptIn
winpe Yes
Geräteoptionen
--------------
Bezeichner {30f44640-add1-11e4-97b2-e8db73286102}
description Ramdisk Options
ramdisksdidevice partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1
ramdisksdipath \Recovery\WindowsRE\boot.sdi
For the tools to work, the system and recovery partition must be type id 0x27 on an MBR disk.
The MBR and GPT partition types are:
| Recovery | 300MB | NTFS | 0x27 | de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac |
|---|
| ESP | 100MB | FAT32 | 0x27 | c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b |
|---|
| MSR | 128MB | NTFS | 0x7 | e3c9e316-0b5c-4db8-817d-f92df00215ae |
|---|
| OS | | NTFS | 0x7 | ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7 |
|---|
Other tools
Helpful tools I've used (apart from REAgentC and bcdedit, obviously) include bcdboot %systemroot% /l en-us /s s: to copy the required files to the boot partition and set the desired locale and the Recovery Environment commands bootsect /nt60 %systemroot%, bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /fixmbr (the latter apparently Windows XP relics) to restore a partition's boot loader.
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