Fix Could not find the Recovery Environment. Fix missing Winre.wim & Windows RE Image Was Not Found

welcome everyone in this session in this video I will be talking about few issues with this laptop that I'm trying to reset uh so let me show you what I'm trying to do I'm trying to reset this PC this is a laptop this is the problem s so I'm getting this error message every time I'm trying to reset this uh to fact your default so the issue so this is a laptop from Lenovo itself it's a Lenovo laptop and then this laptop was out of the country so somebody had borrowed it and they went out of the country they went out of Canada and since this is used at work as well what I was what I'm worried about is that it came back infected because they did connect to a Wi-Fi network at the hotel or wherever they were at the conference so at the airport as well so I just want to be careful in terms of I kind of putting it back into production for somebody else to use um basically the best way to do that for me the easiest and quickest was you just reset this PC but when I tried doing it it didn't let me kind of um as you saw right it says the environment does not exist so why am I trying to do a reset so I've been just reading online and again anybody in the it sector would know this that best way to get rid of um Wares and mware is to reset the computer to facture so there are lots of Threads Online um yeah the reset works but again there's some viruses that can stay in the Bios I don't think this was infected that way but uh even the Bots saying yes the factory said will indeed remove all the viruses and malware as original state when it was first purchased so this machine is activated everything um that's the only reason I'm doing a factory reset I have downloaded the Windows ISO image from Microsoft website you download the windows um media Creator tool I will uh I have the video for that as well when I did the all the downloading and whatnot so uh this is where you will grab your Windows 10 Media or installation media so go to Microsoft .c slca soft download you can just Google this as well downloading the Windows 10 installation media it will take you to this s uh actually if you want to do different version for Windows you can go one level up and then you can choose Windows 11 Windows 10 windows8 or Windows 7 so if you have Windows 11 you'll go to the windows 11 you'll download the tool or installation media for me for this video it's Windows 10 so we're going to go to Windows 10 download the tool and once it's downloaded you just run it and then you pick and choose uh the iso option instead of installing it or creating a USB drive it does take a little bit while even to download ISO then takes even longer to actually create the USB drive so either or whatever method you want to use uh it is up to you guys so instead of doing an upgrade for this PC because is running Windows 10 as well it will give you that option you're going to use create inst installation media so next you can pick and choose the version that you want so 32-bit if your laptop is 32bit or whatever like different languages you can choose and since M 64bit I'm going to choose 64bit go next and I'm going to use ISO file when you click next it will start downloading the file it ask for the folder location so again I had downloaded it I have downloaded it uh this was an afterthought to kind of add this portion into the clip because I already done this part earlier I forgot to do the recording of it so you download the file then you'll see the rest of the video after this section so I just copied the iso image that I created from that uh media creator that Windows gives me I moved it over to my USB drive so this is my USB drive and I'm going to just copy it over let me switch my this screen so I'm going to copy this file over I'm not going to create a USB drive installer because my windows is working fine so my windows is working fine uh I haven't connected to the network either I don't want it connected to the network uh by the way I'm using Elgato so if you're wondering how am I connecting so I'm using my Elgato hd60s Plus for getting the feed from the HDMI because it gives me better quality I did try to do it through the camera phone but the quality wasn't that good so I'm doing it that way using the HDMI output using the Elgato capture card to fetch the video feed so I have my keyboard set up my mouse setup on this system here it's a completely offline system it has never been connected to the network or at least the work Network and my home network because I don't want to infect my system if it's got anything on it it's not misbehaving or anything it's working fine I don't think it's infected but i' rather be safe than sorry so I'm going to just bring the USB over to this machine and as you always eject the USB drive that you have I just rejected that hopefully it's got enough USB ports for me I think it does put that USB drive in here so the problem is uh let me show you what the problem is Drive let's just open the file here so this is the windows so image file uh before I go into mounting and showing you uh what to do let me show you guys what the problem is um let me open up a command prompt so let ke de side I have two keyboards that I'm managing right now I have us me command prompt open the command prompt as administrator I'm logged in as administrator uh this should hopefully also work if you're not actually you know we resetting that um yeah computer you need to be admin so you have to be an administrator on the on the laptop uh so let me show you re agent re agent I think I spelled it right info okay so reagent SL info it says there's supposed to be a Windows re location right here on this line it has nothing on it it says so if I try to so the fix the first fix that you should try if you see a proper path in here this is what I would suggest so if you're getting this error message while trying to do a reset so if you get this eror message I could not find the environment uh recovery environment uh close that this is the first thing you should try so don't even try downloading ISO so you're going to do re agent slash enable you can try that oh uh re agent did I spell it wrong oh re agency I forgot the C uh it says image not found so if you have the image mounted properly it will say enabled I'll show you guys what exactly I'm going to leave this window open leave this window open let me change a bit so it's a little bit more legible okay now the problem is if I'm going to go in here so I go to the PC so C drive uh let me so let me show you guys uh so view we want to look at the hidden files and we want to look at the system files as well so let's enable those so I'm going to unhide system protected files click apply and click okay so go under Windows uh and and in there system 32 you go in uh there's a folder called recovery in there so in here there's supposed to be a file called when r.m. wi so that file doesn't exist we're going to attempt to fix that here so first thing try enabling it if that works great when you do have success just do the reset process it'll work but if you run into this that it does not exist uh this is what you need to do so I've downloaded the iso image I'm don't have a bootable USB you do need to have a 10 gigs of um oh not 10 gigs sorry 8 gigs of USB drive because as you can see this is 4.8 gigs size of the image file or size of the ISO file give you the properties why is not come on there you go sorry the mous is little finiky so 4.6 gigs uh let's move it over let me create a so I'm going to and copy that contr c and we're going to create this is the first step once you have the USB so USB I'm using USB drive if you think you're comfortable connecting to network at your home network you can do everything on this laptop but on I want to be on the safe side I don't want to infect anything on my network I have downloaded the image on the USB drive and I ported it over I did not bother creating windows installer you don't need to and we create a new folder let's call it um let's call it original ISO we're going to go in there and we're going to paste it once it's copied over shouldn't take that long maybe it will four minutes that's okay once it's copied over we will need to I'm going to show you while it's doing that show you the command commands we'll need to run so these are all the commands that we'll need to run um in the past or older versions the install. viim file like this is the file that you need so install. Bim file used to exist on Theo the recent versions of Windows 10 ISO that you get they have the EST file so uh we will have to convert that to the Wi IM file then from there mount it and then enable and kind of reset the laptop again it doesn't it does take a little bit depending on the little bit uh longer if you got like for example a system not running SSD this system has an nvme so the copy paste the extraction and everything kind of goes pretty quick so again these are the commands that you need to run once the once we get the iso image so we'll need to get this file off that mounted drive I'm going to pause this while this copy is happening right here and I'll come back once the copy has completed do the copy has completed let's do uh I have my commands uh open on my other screen that I'm going to look at and then go over so Windows C drive um original so I created a folder called Original ISO uh we're we need to create another folder so that I'm going to call it Mount W you can call it whatever you want doesn't have to be Mount or whatever but I'm going to create another folder if you'll need that we'll use that I'll show you guys in the commands that we going to run now um so I'm going to unmount let's just do that I'm going to eject the USB drive since we don't need it anymore that is gone let open up nope not that don't need this door let's open the SE drive orinal so we have the command prompt still open we are going to browse to this folder actually before I do that we don't need to browse this folder we are going to mount it so right click or double click either or reward will work by the way you don't need to do this ISO mounting and whatnot if you already have the USB drive so if you got Windows 10 USB drive install installer USB drive Windows 11 you can just pop that USB stick in and this is exactly what you'll see on the USB drive as well so this is what you so you can copy over so so you can follow along if you have the USB drive plugged in um as well we need to just copy over certain files so I believe this install. ESD file exists in the sources but we're going to just search for it so search so yeah it does exist in the sources folder uh the size is 3.8 gigs let's copy it let's copy it over to to our ISO again we're going to use the same folder we're going to use the same original ISO folder I'm going to paste it in here and we can unmount that's all we need from that Windows installer so that is the only file that you'll need me eject that as well we are now going to browse to the original ISO folder go to the directory listing you can see see it's got install. TD file so we need to run this command I should have copied the command over to a text file and then then copy paste but I guess uh this way you guys can follow along as well if you're doing it get call install see um is it case sensitive I think it is case sensitive I thought it was not K Cas Cas sensitive GT or gt Dash then and oh I put the N instead of M so maybe that was the reason so I'll I I'll try it out so okay so why we you're doing this because we need the index so I think it it is case insensitive so GM okay so yeah never mind I just had the N instead of M M as in Mary so I had n n as a Nancy uh why we did this because we need to get the or V when I say V you guys will need to get the proper index for for the version that you're installing so for example this laptop originally came with an activated with Windows 10 Pro so I'm going this is Windows 10 Pro itself so I will need to install Windows 10 Pro so my index value would be six so it's better to kind of just write it down so my index value is six from my Windows Pro as we're going to need that uh so again if you have Windows 10 home Edition for example example here it could have been index number one so forth so once we have the information uh we are going to extract that um the image file we can extract the W IM file from the estd file to do that again I'm on the same folder so dism this is the command you need run again here's where you'll need the index Source I probably don't need to worry about these CIT letters and whatnot inall VD again my my install VD file exists in the same location where I'm running this command from so make sure you're in the right folder with the file otherwise it might say path not found or file not found also so Source index so this is where I'll need to put or you will need to put the index so mine was six uh Yes mine was six uh so if you have Windows home I think it is [Music] one image file where you want to save it we're going to save it in the same folder m these are ads we need to use check and it should take about five minutes or so once it's done uh we'll come back I will probably just let the recording go and then just fast forward it once it's done uh we'll do the next step so that just completed um and I'm I'm going to show you guys what actually happens so I have this PC origal Drive um so we got the install. W file extracted so that is all we need now we're going to mount it so you'll be surprised so when I do the mounting you'll be surprised to see how much uh expansion happens or how much space is actually be use so let's run the other command that is needed so we got the so we got the installed the wi file now we're going to mount it so that's why now we're going to use this folder that we just created so create a folder or you can use original ISO as the folder as well so create a folder called Mount whm or whatever you want to call it mountd or just mount this is the command that you'll need to run again sitting in the original ISO folder that I have here where the file is I will need to run this command dis Mount DMM file this is where the file is located ours is located here origal I so slash install. W I'm just hitting tab to get the path so you can just do that as well instead of typing it in so here you'll need to just put this um path where this file is found index ones MD see called M whm so this is not Mount whm this is the folder that I created so so if I if I so for example if you don't have the folder already you will get this message that hey the directory doesn't exist so make sure you have the mount directory or or that folder created is called Lim it's going to finish or it's going to do the deployment okay I think it takes a little while again I will let it run and then come back okay so it has been mounted see if we can see any of it here there you go so so oh if I do the properties on this folder it's going to be more than 4 gigs like look at the size of this it's like a full install installer that you would have for Windows 10 so it extracted everything uh in here there I don't know if I need to do this but I'm going to show you guys that technically the file should exist here so this is the file that we are after uh it should exist in your see in your windows basically the the the laptop or the windows instance that is corrupt that doesn't have the recovery image so this is what we are after that's it this one file for this one file we have to do all these things so next thing you don't need to copy anything over you just need to enable so you're going to go reagent C now that we have mounted it right so we're going to do reagent uh T slash again info uh it's disabled and now if I try enabling it it says oh not found okay sorry so I do need to do this bit I am going to copy over sorry I thought I need to this do the step so I'm going to copy over the wi rme file so we're going to copy that that we located it so under your mounted folder Windows system 32 recovery in there there is the vin. VM file we are going to move it over to the recovery folder and paste it to this is your windows your windows that's corrupt po it over and then we will try it again it should work this time and as you can see it did work it said operation is successful the file should disappear yeah it does disappear after you run this command but it is all good we are going to try doing a reset and that is it we should be able to do the reset on this laptop get started moove everything there you go I can change the settings I want to clean upcl work space or again I want to do full cleanup delete the workspace resources and know I don't want to download the windows confirm and reset so that is all you need to do to fix this problem and if I do the info again should give me a path and there you have it so it's enabled so what happens after you do the reset uh the tool this you don't have to do all these steps again like ever again uh because it does kind of uh create the recovery partition and everything for the next time you need to reset so this is a onetime thing if your windows was corrupted for some reason from Factory so my laptop came like this I don't know why this is a Lenovo laptop with Windows Pro on it from Factory uh I did reach out to the support and I wasn't able to get much help from them so I ended up uh Googling lots of things uh and was able to find this solution I if you like this um video if you did this if this did help you guys please do post your comments below if this was helpful for you guys it is much appreciated your feedback uh I always like to see your feedbacks and comments if you like this video please do hit that like button please do subscribe it does help the channel it does help keep motivated building or creating these videos and whatnot um please take care of yourselves and stay safe um over the past few weeks I've been super sick with flu and whatnot so not a fun time for me the holidays were ruined for me because of that so hopefully you guys had a wonderful holiday and uh please and I hope you guys are getting back into the groove of working again after the holiday break and please take care do subscribe if you can it is much appreciated take care guys bye

Channel: HashTagTnT

Views: 4,647

Keywords: factory reset, winre.wim, install.esd, missing recovery image, missing windows recovery, unable to reset pc, recovery image fails, recovery environment missing

Id: Jpr_pExkEOQ

Length: 29min 16sec (1756 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2024