The Recovery Drive triggers a BSOD despite a fully functioning Windows 11 system?
The Recovery Drive triggers a BSOD despite a fully functioning Windows 11 system?
I own a Windows 11 machine that's functioning well with BitLocker activated. I made a recovery drive on the same system using a 64GB USB stick, then restarted via the new drive and received an error stating the OS couldn't load due to missing or corrupted critical system files.
Do recovery drives made in Windows 11 fail when BitLocker is enabled?
Based on what I understand of the situation, I would expect this to be a significant security issue.
If simply having a "recovery drive" could bypass BitLocker, it would be a major flaw.
My Macrium Reflect incremental or full drive images tell me it is creating backups without encryption, even though BitLocker is active on the disk. Therefore, I can restore it to any available drive in this system without any encrypted data.
The situation is becoming more intriguing. Rebooting via Settings, System, Recovery, and Advanced Startup still displays the same error message upon restart. It seems the issue isn’t related to the USB recovery drive or the Windows 11 primary partition (C drive) with its operating system and applications. Instead, it appears the Windows Recovery Environment (WRE) partition created during a clean install of 24H2 Windows 11 via the Media Creation Tool is corrupted. I need to rebuild that WRE partition on the main hard drive. It’s likely that using mediacreationtool.exe for an in-place reinstall—while preserving apps and files from the correct Windows 11 version (24H2)—will restore the Windows Recovery Environment. I should have used mediacreationtool.exe initially instead of RUFUS, but I’ll proceed with the alternative method. I’ll run Win 11 setup.exe from an admin-logged-in session on this PC and let you know the outcome.
Make sure all non-OS files on this disk are backed up elsewhere and kept offline throughout the procedure.
Absolutely, it remains the same every time. Everything is stored on two separate drives. I'm taking precautions.
The system encountered an issue after the Windows repair process and when launching setup.exe from the USB drive within Windows 11, resulting in the specified error message.
The manufacturer partition is healthy, the EFI system partition is healthy, and the C drive Win 11 partition is also healthy. However, there is no available space on the disk. This lack of room is the cause behind the previous error message. To proceed, use mediacreationtool.exe from the latest Windows 11 version to generate a fresh Windows 11 installation drive for this computer. Next, reduce the size of the C drive Win 11 partition, which currently has significant unallocated space—about 50GB—to around 100GB. This adjustment should enable launching setup.exe from the new Windows 11 USB drive (while retaining all files and apps) to ultimately produce a Windows 11 system recovery partition. Let's attempt it. Here we go.
We secured a winner! The process was straightforward:
1. Verified there was sufficient unallocated space at the end of the hard drive.
2. Ran mediacreationtool.exe with the latest Win11 version to generate an installation USB, then selected KEEP my apps and files during setup in the USB drive.
Now I can access the Windows recovery environment from a Win11 USB created on the PC or via Windows Settings, System, Recovery, Advanced Startup, Restart. It’s really simple once you’re familiar with it. Happy Easter everyone. This case is closed.