Rebuilding the BCD for the Recovery Partition?

Tanj!

Member
Long story short I deleted the BCD file in the \boot directory of my recovery partition on my Fujitsu T2010 laptop. My attempts to rebuild it using the excellent walkthroughs on this site have all been failures. The issue being that the recovery partition launches a Windows PE installation in the same manor as the Vista Recovery Disk does. My problem is I'm unsure of how to modify the Holocaust instructions as outlined here to load the PE environment instead of the standard windows environment. Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks.


P.S. The second option would be for some handy soul to e-mail me the BCD file from their T2010.
 
Hi Tanj!, welcome to NST.

Are you trying to recover access to your Vista or your Vista recovery partition?
 
The Vista recovery partition. I've found some details on MS website about booting a PE from a harddisk that i'm working on right now but until I'll take any expert advice.

Addendum:

And just to fill in a bit more information.

C:\ Original Vista Installation that after fixing BCD only boots to a black screen with a mouse cursor (reason why trying to restore system.)
D:\ Small (1gig) partition that has nothing in it and I'll assume is part of the recovery process
E:\ Small (1gig) partition that originally did not have a drive letter assigned. Vista Recovery Disk assigned a drive letter to this. This is the recovery partition and originally had it's own \boot\BCD file independent of the c:\ which I deleted by accident.
 
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To access the Recovery Partition you should hit F11 or F12 right after the BIOS screen goes away.
 
The Vista recovery partition. I've found some details on MS website about booting a PE from a harddisk that i'm working on right now but until I'll take any expert advice.

Addendum:

And just to fill in a bit more information.

C:\ Original Vista Installation that after fixing BCD only boots to a black screen with a mouse cursor (reason why trying to restore system.)
D:\ Small (1gig) partition that has nothing in it and I'll assume is part of the recovery process
E:\ Small (1gig) partition that originally did not have a drive letter assigned. Vista Recovery Disk assigned a drive letter to this. This is the recovery partition and originally had it's own \boot\BCD file independent of the c:\ which I deleted by accident.

Give that partition a letter.
Then launch EasyBCD | Add/Remove Entries | WinPE
Point EasyBCD to that drive, and add it is an "Extracted Ramdisk" entry.

You should be able to boot into it with the newly-created EasyBCD menu entry.
 
Give that partition a letter.
Then launch EasyBCD | Add/Remove Entries | WinPE
Point EasyBCD to that drive, and add it is an "Extracted Ramdisk" entry.

You should be able to boot into it with the newly-created EasyBCD menu entry.

Except that I don't have a single bootable version of windows. However I could nuke the Vista install, re-install, run BCD and get the recovery partition working and then do a real recovery.
 
It sounds to me that Vista is just broken because elsewise there would probably be an error on the screen.

Boot from the Windows DVD and enter the recovery options menu. I'm not sure (haven't had the need to do it myself), but If it detects the partition as a valid installation, it might be possible to select it, enter the command prompt at the recovery options menu, and repair the BCD store by using "bootrec /fixboot" or "bootrec /fixmbr".

Except that I don't have a single bootable version of windows. However I could nuke the Vista install, re-install, run BCD and get the recovery partition working and then do a real recovery.

There would be no need to use the recovery parition anyway after the reinstallation of Windows for your problem would be fixed. (Unless of course you have some software you don't have reinstallation media for that is a part of the recovery image).
 
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you know, i am having the same issue, except on an HP Pavilion, ultimately I would like to know how to add the recovery partition to the BCD file. I have tried using EasyBCD and manually adding the WINPE RAMDISK entry, pointing it to the partition viewing the changes in BCD which seem correct, and it still will not boot using F11, when I press F11, I get a boot options menu "Vista Premium" or WINPE RAMDISK, when I select the PE option it just sends me back to the BIOS page and boots the system over again, F8 provides the usual options of Safe Mode, last know config etc. I have rebuilt the MBR, rebuilt the BCD. Is there any way to fix this without installing Vista again? Oh, one other note, the Recovery Disc Creation software that came loaded with the O/S from HP cannot find the partition either, but I can see it plan as day in Windows Explorer, the partition is not set to active as only one can be active at a time, so I left C: as active, if i change it to D: where the recovery lies it still does not work............SIGH.......

Please read my BCD file to see what the issue may be.

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=C:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {cce58f38-b2c6-11dd-b39a-806e6f6e6963}
displayorder {current}
{572bcd55-ffa7-11d9-aae0-0007e994107d}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 5
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows Vista (TM) Home Premium
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {cce58f38-b2c6-11dd-b39a-806e6f6e6963}
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {572bcd55-ffa7-11d9-aae0-0007e994107d}
device partition=D:
path \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\BOOT\WINLOAD.EXE
description WINPE RAMDISK
recoverysequence {572bcd55-ffa7-11d9-aae0-0007e994107d}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \WINDOWS
nx OptIn
detecthal Yes
winpe Yes
Thanks
Aaron

Addendum:

OK, I think I finally found a possible solution from Microsoft, here is the link
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721886.aspx

and here is a snippet from their site.
To create an entry to boot a WIM image from hard disk
  1. Create the {ramdisktoptions} object in your BCD store by specifying the following. Drive should be the drive that contains the image.
    bcdedit /create {ramdiskoptions} /d "Ramdisk options"
    bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice partition=Drive
    bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdipath \boot\boot.sdi
  2. Create a new boot application entry by specifying:
    bcdedit /create /d "Boot from WIM" /application OSLOADER
  3. This will return an identifier (GUID) for the newly created entry. This new entry will be referred to as {GUID} in the rest of this procedure. Next specify the following:
    bcdedit /set {GUID} device ramdisk=[c:]\sources\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
    bcdedit /set {GUID} path \windows\system32\winload.exe
    bcdedit /set {GUID} osdevice ramdisk=[c:]\sources\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
    bcdedit /set {GUID} systemroot \windows
  4. If you are booting into Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), then you will also need to specify:
    bcdedit /set {GUID} winpe yes
    bcdedit /set {GUID} detecthal yes
  5. Next specify the following to add your new entry to the display order:
    bcdedit /displayorder {GUID} /addlast
How to change the debugger settings of a specific entry

To override the global entry for a specific debugger setting, type one of the following.
 
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I know that this is an old thread......but I had to reply....
I just registered here to say: Thank you atrembla.....

I had to modify some entries in the mentioned solution to work....

Here is how it worked for me:
  1. Create the {ramdisktoptions} object in your BCD store by specifying the following. Drive should be the drive that contains the image.
    bcdedit /create {ramdiskoptions} /d "Ramdisk options"
    bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice partition=D:
    bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdipath \boot\boot.sdi
  2. Create a new boot application entry by specifying:
    bcdedit /create /d "Boot from WIM" /application OSLOADER
  3. This will return an identifier (GUID) for the newly created entry. This new entry will be referred to as {GUID} in the rest of this procedure. Next specify the following:
    bcdedit /set {GUID} device ramdisk=[D:]\sources\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
    bcdedit /set {GUID} path \windows\system32\winload.exe
    bcdedit /set {GUID} osdevice ramdisk=[D:]\sources\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
    bcdedit /set {GUID} systemroot \windows
  4. If you are booting into Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), then you will also need to specify:
    bcdedit /set {GUID} winpe yes
    bcdedit /set {GUID} detecthal yes
  5. Next specify the following to add your new entry to the display order:
    bcdedit /displayorder {GUID} /addlast
Where my HP recovery partition is D:

I hope that this helps others facing the same problem......
"A small gift has been attached":smile:
Regards,
Ahmad
 

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Apologies for the (big) bump everyone. I just wanted to mention that atrembla's instructions (then ahmad2080's correction) has done wonders for getting my recovery partition up and running again.

I, like many other people these days, have an OEM laptop without any installation or recovery media besides what's on the system hard disk. I used MiniTool's Partition Wizard to resize and move my system and recovery partitions, boy was that a bad idea! After not being able to boot (and consequently loading up a Windows 7 installation cd), I ran checkdisk only to be presented with line after line of errors.

Somehow, though, a lot of my files appeared to be intact. :happy: I followed the above instructions to get my recovery partition up and running and rebuilding the BCD, then after copying over a BOOT.WIM and BOOT.SDI from another vista machine, I am busily repairing the computer with the hope that I won't need a real Vista install CD. :scared:

The only thing I had to change regarding the instructions was the path parameter for the bcdedit sequence. For me, winload.exe was actually located in \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe. Maybe that was just how Dell had decided to setup the partition!

Once again, thanks for the information everyone!
 
You're welcome, tgp1994. Thanks for sharing your update.

The winload.exe should not be in the boot folder, that is a backup copy. Your winload.exe appears to have been removed by malware, perhaps?
 
You're welcome, tgp1994. Thanks for sharing your update.

The winload.exe should not be in the boot folder, that is a backup copy. Your winload.exe appears to have been removed by malware, perhaps?

I think that is a definite possibility. I found it odd that the recovery partition was writable right in side of windows, so I would have to wonder too if it became infected by a virus and was later removed during a scan. Thank goodness for back ups!
 
I have the same problem with a hp, but I can not solve the above instructions, specifically on this line:

bcdedit / set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice partition = D:

I get the following error:

Error when setting item data.
Request not supported.

So I can not solve my problem because?
 
bcdedit / set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice partition = D:

I get the following error:

Error when setting item data.
Request not supported.

So I can not solve my problem because?

because your "item data" contained spaces. You'll notice that in the examples, there are no spaces:

NOT
>partition = D:
rather
partition=D:

Hope this helps
 
Hi,
Please boot with your original Windows 10 installation media, select the repair mode during the “install now “ screen. And choose the “Startup repair” option in the Windows Repair Environment.
Type diskpart
Type select disk 0
Type list partition
Then note the partition number where you installed Windows 10.
Type select partition X (X is the partition number where Windows is installed)
type active
type exit
type bcdboot C:\windows (if C is your windows partition)
 
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