Microsoft Did It Again! Beware Of Bugged Update KB5034441

[chrcoluk]

I tried this out on my NUC as its a throwaway install anyway, of course the update failed, but surprisingly the Microsoft script also failed. So much for that script eh.

I found a script from action1 which worked and expanded, the update installed. However that script states it wont be of any use to someone where the partition is at start of disk, it will only resize when it is at the end.

 

[KedsDead]

I re-installed Windows 11 just the other day. Clean install, deleted all the partitions and ran with it. This is what it set my disk partition for C:/ to.

 

[chrcoluk]

Wow what a mess.

So someone who I consider to be pretty knowledgeable, told me it would be wise to boost the size anyway as Microsoft are now routinely patching the RE on their CU's.

So I did a image backup and started looking at my main PC. After many hours this is the conclusion.

Was 2 recovery partitions, and reagentc in a broken state. The winre.wim file present on the system weas from build 1809 of windows, since this install was a in place upgrade of 21H2 over 1809, it looks like RE has probably been broken since day 1 of that upgrade.

However I have macrium rescue OS images I use for emergencies, and recovery was already disabled in my BCD config anyway, so after spending some time trying to fix it, I ended up just removing all my recovery partitions (I had made a new gig one to replace the two existing 500MB, second one was made by 21H2 installer), and have left RE disabled. I have been assured without an RE any CU will skip that part of its upgrade and I will be good to go, but I did have to hide KB5034441 as the broken reagentc state seems to be making that fail. The normal CU for this month has installed fine.

If this bites me in the back down the road I will clean reinstall the OS, although 21H2 clean install will still default to a too small size, however I have tested on my NUC, its easily remedied from a clean install state (at least for someone who is tech minded).

He also told me this is likely avoidable, the problem is caused by Microsoft deciding to do all RE staging inside the RE, if they did that in the main OS partition there probably would be enough space.

Boot drive is currently gap city. EFI -> gap -> OS -> gap -> Games -> my unallocated (I had dumped the 1 gig RE here when trying to fix it).

 

[ThrashZone]

I re-installed Windows 11 just the other day. Clean install, deleted all the partitions and ran with it. This is what it set my disk partition for C:/ to.

View attachment 331483

Hi,
lol yeah ms at their finest
Add a partition between the RE and C with disk management and DM breaks the RE lol

 

[ThrashZone]

Well got my x99 win-10 22h2 efi from mbr with a new Re partition in front of C and updated
RE takes up a lot less room than win-11 does 300mb less
I'll likely mount 23h2 tomorrow

 

[delshay]

After so many issues with 22H2 updates, now I've hit this bug on win 10. I do know how to increase the partition size, but that's not my job. Also why is KB5034441 not in the Microsoft catalogue? Doing a search shows nothing.

 

[Vayra86]

Lmao

Some things never change.

 

[A Computer Guy]

So I decided to give this a try finally because I needed to expand my VM disk space and the recovery partition was now in the middle of the disk preventing me from expanding the C partition.

KB5028997: Instructions to manually resize your partition to install the WinRE update - Microsoft Support

support.microsoft.com

I was successful in removing the partition, resizing C, creating and resizing a new recovery partition, re-enabling WinRE, and applying update KB5034441, or so I thought from an error free experience.

But wait! It's kind of hard to recover from a recovery partition that is almost EMPTY right? (I didn't have the instruction to hide the drive letter and noticed the unrelenting free space)

Still I managed to get into the recovery menus and reset the PC. I guess it was successful but I was expecting something more to be in the partition? I did not get to try all the various options yet.

 

[Shrek]

It says it is empty, but it is not.

Microsoft Did It Again! Beware Of Bugged Update KB5034441

Can't download and install KB5034441, and of course MS wants me to increase the recovery partition in question which is already at 529mb ?! Can i change the size using Disk Genius safely and is there a place to find written instructions ? Or should i just hold tight and wait for this update to...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[ThrashZone]

So I decided to give this a try finally because I needed to expand my VM disk space and the recovery partition was now in the middle of the disk preventing me from expanding the C partition.

KB5028997: Instructions to manually resize your partition to install the WinRE update - Microsoft Support

support.microsoft.com

I was successful in removing the partition, resizing C, creating and resizing a new recovery partition, re-enabling WinRE, and applying update KB5034441, or so I thought from an error free experience.

But wait! It's kind of hard to recover from a recovery partition that is almost EMPTY right? (I didn't have the instruction to hide the drive letter and noticed the unrelenting free space)

View attachment 341750​

Still I managed to get into the recovery menus and reset the PC. I guess it was successful but I was expecting something more to be in the partition? I did not get to try all the various options yet.

Hi,
You can't go by what DM says it's dysfunctional as hell at reading system partitions.
Use free minitool or any real partition manager app instead for accurate readings.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Hi,
You can't go by what DM says it's dysfunctional as hell at reading system partitions.
Use free minitool or any real partition manager app instead for accurate readings.
View attachment 341764

I've never seen disk properties misreport disk space before. I'll do some more investigation later tonight with other tools.

 

[ThrashZone]

I've never seen disk properties misreport disk space before. I'll do some more investigation later tonight with other tools.

Hi,
System partitions DM is useless
C/D/.. it does better.

 

[chrcoluk]

Hi,
You can't go by what DM says it's dysfunctional as hell at reading system partitions.
Use free minitool or any real partition manager app instead for accurate readings.
View attachment 341764

Is there such a thing as a freeware partition tool that doesnt install bloatware or nagware?

Microsoft really need to improve disk manager. An OS should have built in tools to do the basics at a minimum. CLI diskpart doesnt cut it in a UI focused OS.

 

[Shrek]

MiniTool Partition Wizard perhaps

MiniTool Partition Wizard Free | The Best Partition Manager for Windows

 

[DaemonForce]

Oh. Welp, today I learned that my Surface tablet REALLY doesn't like this update. I was wondering what was failing when it's not even the 2nd Tuesday of the month. How long has this been a thing? Almost THREE months? Damn.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Hi,
System partitions DM is useless
C/D/.. it does better.
View attachment 341769

Well checked some of my other PC's and it was staring me in the face and I never noticed it before.

 

[ThrashZone]

Well checked some of my other PC's and it was staring me in the face and I never noticed it before.

Hi,
Yeah you do still need to remove the E drive letter from your recovery partition
Here are the instruction I got a while back when I wanted to add my larger RE partition in front of C plus I switched from mbr to gpt as well using a couple system images made with reflect free of the original mbr C partition and new install gpt install and drag/ dropped the original C partition onto the new installs C partition hehe

1) Disable the recovery partition by running in cmd as admin
reagentc /disable

2)Assign a drive letter to the Recovery Tools partition that
you want Windows to use (this is only temporary).
assign letter=R

3)Run the command
reagentc /setreimage /path R:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target C:\Windows

NOTE: Replace the R: with the drive letter that you assigned to the
Recovery Tools partition.

4)Run
reagentc /enable

5)Verify that this worked by running
reagentc /info

6) You can now remove the drive letter that you assigned to the
Recovery Tools partition.
remove letter=R

Before



After also changed boot drives to 980 pro instead of 970 evo+

 

[bonehead123]

Lmao

Some things never change.

Because "history teaches us that history teaches us nothing" - Gen. G. S. Patton

 

[skizzo]

I hate myself a little now because I caved in and did this myself. I was adamant on waiting for MS to fix it but I kinda doubt that is ever going to be the case at this point.

 

[Shrek]

I have a spare machine that I leave unfixed so I can see if MS fix it and if so if it avoids extending the partition.

 

[68Olds]

I just used wushowhide.diagcab to hide the update on several Win10 machines. No longer an issue for me.

Hide or Show Windows Updates in Windows 10

How to Hide or Show Windows Updates in Windows 10

www.tenforums.com

 

[AusWolf]

I have a spare machine that I leave unfixed so I can see if MS fix it and if so if it avoids extending the partition.

I'm not fixing it on any of my machines manually. If Microsoft can't be asked to figure out something, then neither should I.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yeah I've not installed the update the OP issue is about
I just did all this on my systems for kicks not for the update in question hehe

 

[A Computer Guy]

Because "history teaches us that history teaches us nothing" - Gen. G. S. Patton

That's not to say history doesn't include valuable lessons.

 

[bonehead123]

That's not to say history doesn't include valuable lessons.

Trudat, however, if those lessons are not heeded, then what good are they ?

Which is the primary point that Patton was trying to make, mostly with regards to Rommel's battlefield tactics, which he studied in great detail to find ways to defeat his massive ground assaults...