How to Create a Recovery Partition if Missing on Windows 10/11.

In this guide you will find step-by-step instructions on how to create a Windows recovery partition (aka "WinRE Partition") if it is missing in Windows 10/11.

The Recovery partition (aka "Windows Recovery Environment Partition") is a hidden partition on your hard drive that contains the necessary tools to repair your Windows 10/11 installation, without the need of a Windows Installation USB Media.

Usually, the Recovery partition is created by default during a clean installation of Windows 10/11, and you can see it in Disk Management (as in screenshot below).

However, in some cases the recovery partition may be missing (not shown in Disk Management) and as a result you cannot boot your system into the Windows recovery environment (aka "WinRE") to repair Windows.

In a such a case, you can follow the steps in this guide to manually create a Recovery Partition with the necessary repair tools to repair your system.

How to Create the Windows Recovery Partition on Legacy (MBR) or EFI (GPT) Windows 10/11 systems.

If the Recovery Partition is missing from your system (you don't see the Recovery partition in Windows Disk Management utility), or if the Windows Recovery Environment is not working, or if you receive the message "Could not find the recovery environment" when you try to restore Windows using the "Reset this PC" option, follow one the methods below to fix the problem.

Method 1. Force Windows to Create the Windows RE Partition by performing a In-Place Upgrade.

The first and easiest method in my opinion to create a recovery partition in Windows 10/11, is to repair and upgrade Windows using a Windows ISO file. To do this, follow the instructions in one of the following articles according your Windows version:

• How to Repair Windows 10 with an In-Place Upgrade.
• How to Repair Windows 11 with an In-Place Upgrade.

Method 2. Create and Activate the Recovery Partition manually.

Step 1. Download Windows ISO file.

To manually create the Recovery Partition (aka "WinRE Partition", or "Windows Recovery Environment Partition") on Windows 10/11, you will need the following two (2) files, which can be obtained (extracted) from a Windows.ISO image file.

• Reagent.xml  (Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) configuration file).
• Winre.wim (Windows Recovery Environment Boot Image)

So, if you don't own a Windows ISO file, then, according to your Windows version, proceed to download Windows 10 or Windows 11 in a ISO file using the instructions on this article.

Step 2. Extract Required files from a Windows 10/11 ISO file.

To extract the above mentioned files, from the Windows ISO file, do the following:

1. Download and install the 7-Zip file archiver.

2. Then, double-click on the Windows.iso file to mount it (open it), in File Explorer.

3. Explore the contents of the mounted ISO file and open the "sources" folder.

4. Right-click on the install.esd file (or on install.wim file) and select 7-Zip > Open archive

5a. Now double-click to open any of the numbered folders (e.g. the "1" in this example), and…

5b. …navigate to this folder:

• Windows\System32\Recovery\

6a. Then click the Extract button from the menu and…

6b. …select to copy the Reagent.xml & Winre.wim files to the "C:\sources\" folder and click OK.

7. When the extraction is completed, close 7-zip and continue to next step.

Step 3. Copy REAGENT.XML & WINRE.WIM to 'C:\Windows\System32\Recovery' folder.

1. Now, go ahead to copy the extracted files "Reagent.xml" & "Winre.wim" files from the "C:\sources" folder, and…

2. … paste them to the following location/folder: *

• C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\

* Notes:
1. When asked, choose to Replace the file in the destination and then click Continue.

2. Important: In case of error in any of the remaining steps, copy again these files to "C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\" folder and then continue with the next step.

Step 4. Allocate Space for the Recovery Partition.

To create a recovery partition, you must first allocate space for it. To do this, you need to shrink the size of the C: drive by 1 GB (1000MB), as described below:

1. Press the Windows + R  keys to open the 'Run' command box.
2. In run command box, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter to open Disk Management.

3. In Disk Management, right-click on drive C: and select Shrink Volume.

4. At Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB, type 1000 and then press Shrink.

5. Now right-click on the Unallocated space and select New Simple Volume.

6. On the Simple Volume creation wizard, continually click Next to create the new volume.

7. When asked to assign a drive letter, choose Do not assign a drive letter or path (Important) and click then click Next.

8. Then choose Next again to Quick Format the volume and then click Finish.*

9. When done, continue to next step.

Step 5. Find Out the Partition Style on Disk.

Before setting the created partition as a Recovery partition, you'll need to know the type of the partition style on your system. To view the partition style on your system:

1. In Disk Management, right-click on Disk 0 and choose Properties.

3. Select the Volumes tab and notice if the Partition Style is "GUID Partition Table (GPT)" or "Master Boot Record (MBR)". When done, close this window and the Disk  Management and go to next step. *

* Note: The information you get from here will be needed in the next step.

Step 6. Change the Partition type of the New Volume to "Recovery".

After creating the new partition, proceed and change its type from "Primary" or "Basic Data Partition", to "Recovery", using the DISKPART utility:

1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator and then run the following commands in order:

• diskpart
• list disk
• select disk 0
• list partition

2. Now notice the partition number of the new partition you created with size 1000 MB (e.g. the partition "3" in this example).

* Note: On EFI systems with GUID Partition Table (GPT), usually the partition number is "4".

3. Then give the following command to select the new partition, using its partition number.*

• select partition number

* Note: Replace the partition number, according your case. In this example (MBR Partition style), the command is:

• select partition 3

4. Now, according to the partition style [GUID (EFI systems) or MBR (Legacy Systems)] you noticed in previous step, give the corresponding command (or commands) below to set the type of the selected partition to "Recovery":

A. If you have GUID Partition Table (GPT), give these two (2) commands:

• set id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac
• gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001

B. If you own Master Boot Record (MBR) table, give this command:*

• set id=27 override

* Note: In our example we use the "set id=27 override" command, because the partition style is MBR.

5. When done, type exit to close the diskpart tool and without closing the command prompt window, continue to next step.

Step 7. Force Windows to Enable the Windows Recovery Environment.

After following the above steps, use the "REAgentC.exe" tool to force Windows to copy the WindowsRE boot image file 'Winre.wim", to the created Recovery partition, and to  create the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) on it.

1. In Command Prompt (Admin), type this command and press Enter:

• reagentc /enable

2. After you get the "Operation Succeeded" message, the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) should be created and enabled on the recovery partition you created before (e.g. the "partition 3" in this example). To verify this, give the following command:

• reagentc /info

3. That's it! If you have followed the above steps exactly, you should have successfully created and configured the missing recovery partition.

4. To ensure that the Recovery Environment is working, boot to Windows RE and see if all the repair options are there. (Startup Repair, Command Prompt, Reset This PC, System Restore, etc..).

That's it! Let me know if this guide has helped you by leaving your comment about your experience. Please like and share this guide to help others.

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Konstantinos Tsoukalas

Konstantinos is the founder and administrator of Wintips.org. Since 1995 he works and provides IT support as a computer and network expert to individuals and large companies. He is specialized in solving problems related to Windows or other Microsoft products (Windows Server, Office, Microsoft 365, etc.).

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