Windows 8.1 Create Recovery Disk

[Geoffrey Beird]

Ifyour device encounters severe issues, such as an inability to access the operating system, you can utilize a recovery drive to access the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). It assists in the restoration of Windows or the execution of system restore points. To use a recovery drive, you must first prepare an empty USB flash drive (with a minimum of 16GB of space) to create a Windows recovery drive. As Windows undergoes periodic updates to enhance security and device performance, it is recommended to periodically create a new recovery drive.

Note: When restoring the device via a recovery drive, the original disk partition data on the system drive may be deleted. (If your device supports MyASUS in WinRE or ASUS Recovery, functionalities built into the disk partitions on the system drive will be removed.) If you wish to preserve these functionalities, you can restore the device through a system image, thereby backing up the data in the disk partitions. Learn more about How to create and use Windows System Image to restore your device.

If you experience the device cannot boot, you can use the recovery drive to enter Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), and then restore from a system restore point or reinstall Windows via the recovery drive.

I just installed the Service Pack 4 for Symantec System Recovery 2013 R2 Desktop Edition yesterday. I was looking forward to testing a restore of a Windows 10 Professional partition from a Recovery point set. Everything installs fine for the main SSR 2013 R2 software (including SP4) but I cannot create a Symantec System Recovery Disk (USB) using the Symantec System Recovery Disk Creation Wizard because I am getting the following error messages ...

Error message after choosing the TYPICAL option for the Select Recovery Disk creation option ... "You are not creating the Symantec System Recovery Disk on the latest operating system (Windows 10) that is supported by the product. You can use this recovery disk to restore only Windows 8.1/2012 Server and earlier. Do you want to continue?"

Error message after choosing the ADVANCED option for the Select Recovery Disk creation option ... "You have not installed the Microsoft Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) on this computer." Then it shows the blue link again ... "Windows ADK Download and install instructions".

I successfully DID install the latest Windows ADK for Windows 10 (Version 1511). I clicked the blue link to SSRHelp "Windows ADK Download and install instructions" when using the Symantec System Recovery Disc Creation Wizard. I successfully installed this software exactly as it says. I don't understand why this wizard is not detecting that I DID in fact install the Windows ADK for Windows 10 (Version 1511) software.

Does anyone at Symantec have a solution to this? Is this a "known issue" for people with Windows 10 who are trying to get the new SSR2013 R2 version 11.1.4.55331 to successfully create a Symantec System Recovery Disk? Can somebody who works for Symantec notify the SSR2013 R2 software developers to work on a solution for this if they aren't already doing so?

In literal terms, a Windows recovery disk is a bootable disc containing advanced recovery options, such as System Restore, Startup Repair, Safe Mode and Command Prompt, with which you can fix system errors and even reinstall Windows 10 or other OS from startup.

Since Windows 8, a new feature has been utilized to create a recovery USB, increasingly prevalent in Windows 10/11. Broadly, a "recovery disk" typically refers to a bootable USB; however, if a USB drive is unavailable or undesired, you can still use CD or DVD to create a system repair disc. But both recovery drive and repair disc can help you access recovery options when failing to boot Windows, which one should you choose? There are some differences between them:

As the repair USB created by the recovery media creator will not work on computers running different systems (or non-system computers). If you want a more flexible way, you can choose to use a third-party media creator - AOMEI Backupper Standard.

Some users may wonder if it is necessary to format the USB in order to make recovery drive. The answer is no, because the Recovery Drive will create a FAT32 formatted USB that can boot in both BIOS-based and UEFI-based PCs.

1. Connect the USB drive to your computer and get access to the recovery drive. You may be asked if you want to allow this app to make changes to your device, please click "Yes". Here are two ways you can use:

*You may find the Windows bootable USB is not working in some cases. For example, you cannot use a Windows 8 recovery disk to restore Windows 10, nor can you use a recovery drive made by Windows 10 64-bit to boot a 32-bit computer. That is to say, you cannot use a Windows 10 recovery USB created in this way on another computer.

After creating Windows 10/11 recovery USB, you may want to know how to use it. Then, I'll show you two common ways, namely, using Windows recovery drive or repair disc, and the third party rescue disk.

4. (Optional) To restore system to a different location, select a destination disk to store the backup image and click "Next". If the destination disk is a new one, please connect it in advance.

5. If you are restoring system to an SSD, tick "SSD Alignment" to accelerate the writing and reading speed of SSD disk. Then, click "Start Restore" to restore system image using recovery disk.

1. Insert your recovery drive or system repair disc. Then, press the displayed F key on the initial screen when you start computer, then change the recovery drive or disc as the first boot option in the BIOS and boot from it.

Both of the previous two options are to reinstall Windows, but the first one allows you to choose to keep or remove your files. The third option is to repair your computer using recovery tools, such as system restore, system image recovery, startup repair, command prompt, etc.

4. Take "Recover from a drive" as an example, click it. Then, select "Just remove my files" to delete only files on your computer. If you want to fully recycle this operating system, you can choose "Fully clean the drive".

5. Click "Recover" to start the recovery process. It will take a while to finish and your PC will restart. Please follow the on-screen instructions to configure your preference settings.

Sometimes, users may find that they are not allowed to create recovery disk in Windows 10/11 and the built-in tool says, "We can't create the recovery drive. A problem occurred while creating the recovery drive". Don't worry, and get corresponding solutions below.

2. From this step to Step 4, you will create a Winre.wim file. If you have that file backed up or you can copy it from another Windows 10/11 computer, you can just skip to Step 5. If you do not have one, you can download installation ISO file from Microsoft. Then, double-click to mount it as a virtual drive.

If you want to protect unlimited computers within your company, you can pick AOMEI Backupper Technician Plus. With the inbuilt AOMEI Image Deploy tool, you are also allowed to deploy/restore system image file on server-side computer to multiple client-side computers over network.

I have never recovered from a recovery disk but in the last 5 years or so must have lost about as many machines due to 'unrecoverable boot errors' as a result of applying an update. These are complex Windows 10 workstations and next time this happens, I want to try the recovery disk option they tout in their otherwise useless recovery blue-screen dialogs.

I am thinking that these must be of recent updates at least, so I have inserted 16Gb USBs into each machine and manually set off the recovery creation. Now, I want to automate and schedule that process.

The goal is to recover a machine, not to reload the OS - and I am not sure if this is possible. Complicating the above is the fact that the boot drives are high speed NVME 256SSD's fuzed (enmotus or StoreMI tech) with regular SATA SSD's of 512Gb in size, yielding a drive that is about 675Gb and for intents as fast as NVMe. The issue that twice, after a Windows update and on reboot, I get a blue screen after reboot and the system refuses to come up. Enmotus tech fuzes the drives at the EFI level by injecting a loader which is also injected into the windows recovery partition. This is the reasoning behind creating recovery disks and updating them on a regular basis. To be clear, I imagine that winRE will be uploading any enMotus related configuration to the recovery flash drive - this in unproven - but is a mute point unless I can be creating the recovery on a regular basis.

3a8082e126