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How to access WinRE from USB drive

I recently restored my Windows 10 Boot Camp partition with Winclone. Unfortunately, I was forced to use their BCD in order to make it bootable, so now it says Vista Business in the config, and the recovery tools are inaccessible from the Windows partition. I created a bootable USB drive with Boot Camp Assistant, including the support software.


Unfortunately, it boots directly to Setup, with no option to access the recovery tools. I believe the culprit is the AutoUnattend.xml file. Is there some key sequence or something that can temporary disable it?

Windows 10

Posted on May 18, 2017 12:01 PM

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Posted on May 18, 2017 1:21 PM

This is what happens when I try to cause two boot failures:

User uploaded file

My "Windows installation disc" would be the USB drive I mentioned earlier. I think the replacement BCD that Winclone provides isn't set up to work with the Recovery Environment. But, and I think this is because of the AutoUnattend.xml file, it goes straight to the setup process, and never presents the "Repair your computer" option. So my original question still stands. I suppose I could delete the file, but that would mean it would no longer automatically run the Boot Camp setup after Windows installs, and I think it won't find the stuff in '$WinPEDriver$'.


Or maybe the only way to have automated installation of the Boot Camp drivers and a recovery disk is to have separate USB drives for installation and recovery. I'd have to go to the store and get one, as I'm all out. Do you think splitting a 16 GB drive into two partitions would work for this purpose?


Also, the fact that that screen isn't blue is slightly concerning.

11 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 18, 2017 1:21 PM in response to Loner T

This is what happens when I try to cause two boot failures:

User uploaded file

My "Windows installation disc" would be the USB drive I mentioned earlier. I think the replacement BCD that Winclone provides isn't set up to work with the Recovery Environment. But, and I think this is because of the AutoUnattend.xml file, it goes straight to the setup process, and never presents the "Repair your computer" option. So my original question still stands. I suppose I could delete the file, but that would mean it would no longer automatically run the Boot Camp setup after Windows installs, and I think it won't find the stuff in '$WinPEDriver$'.


Or maybe the only way to have automated installation of the Boot Camp drivers and a recovery disk is to have separate USB drives for installation and recovery. I'd have to go to the store and get one, as I'm all out. Do you think splitting a 16 GB drive into two partitions would work for this purpose?


Also, the fact that that screen isn't blue is slightly concerning.

May 18, 2017 5:12 PM in response to Loner T

Turns out the recovery drive creator couldn't find some critical files. The refresh my PC option was a no go as well, leaving me no choice but to start from scratch with the Installer USB. I was having second thoughts anyway, since I had a feeling recovery might not work and I'd have to reinstall.


I wish I knew why I cloned a mostly working install, then ended up with a crippled install upon restore.

May 18, 2017 3:37 PM in response to Loner T

REAgentC.exe isn't working for me. I didn't take another picture, but when I use the /enable flag, it alternates between something like "Operation successful." and "Unable to update Boot Configuration Data." /status just tells me it's disabled.


I gather Boot Camp Assistant and the Windows recovery drive creator will both try to wipe the entire drive and replace it with a single partition, making the partitioning idea impossible?


I think for now, I'll just overwrite my Boot Camp USB drive with the Windows recovery creator.

May 18, 2017 8:21 PM in response to Loner T

Sorry, like I said I did a completely fresh install with the Boot Camp USB drive. And how could I have the output of bcdedit from the source version, unless this problem was anticipated before I ran the restore?


I tried the option to not use the replacement BCD first, but that just lead to a blue screen saying it couldn't find winload.exe with a 0xc000000f I believe. After trying some stuff and looking on Google for a solution, I concluded there was no way to fix it.

May 19, 2017 2:52 AM in response to Sam Wilkins

Sam Wilkins wrote:


Sorry, like I said I did a completely fresh install with the Boot Camp USB drive. And how could I have the output of bcdedit from the source version, unless this problem was anticipated before I ran the restore?

If you have a clean install on the internal disk now, you can run bcdedit and capture it, and re-test with Winclone. Was the BCD provided by Winclone Tech Support or 'generated' by Winclone restore?

How to access WinRE from USB drive

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