Windows Recovery Environment explained

Aaron_Lower  as you have asked for feedback

my wishlist (remote-related):

• Windows Inplace Upgrades using setup.exe should save the description into a variable and restore the description on successful upgrades
  • scenario: as Windows Insider, especially when you have a multi-boot system you need to restore the parameters like description and boot menu timeout default every week, for every single installation, every single week

      

• Windows Server 2019 / 2022 should not use the legacy bootmenu [FEATURE REQUEST] Use bootmenupolicy standard for Windows Server vNext - Microsoft Tech Community
  • scenario: as above using Windows Insider Windows 10 and Server on one machine every upgrade of Windows Server will default the menu to legacy bootmenupolicy. it is not easy to revert this even there is a command
    
    

my wishlist (directly related to WinRE)

consolidation of options / tiles

I would like to see all the Advanced Options moved to the troubleshooting.
Why: there are only 2 options in Troubleshoot Reset this PC and again Advanced Options. There is plenty space on the screen.

UX: It would make it much more present to average users to find important steps like UEFI or uninstall updates. The ability to uninstall updates is "new" for sure but greatly unknown as the Advanced Options need 2 dives.
Would this be possible?

Additionally it would be then would then possible to rename the advanced options to "advanced startup options"

Is there a limit of tiles you are able to show on each page? I don't think that any screen resolution today would make this unfeasible, does it?

• WiFi Support + WiFi Selection in WinRE
  • Usecase: make it possible access network locations in case you need to copy / backup files etc. David Segura (#OSDcloud) and also Macrium Reflect have made a great use of WinRE and WiFi
     
• PowerShell 5.1 / 7 Support 

Usecase: currently we only have access to the cmd console with very limited commands

What do you think about the ideas?

WinRE issues: 

Sorry to say but Startup Repair is pretty much never helpful when you need it. It needs serious review, especially with modern GPT.

- especially It is not able to recovery issues with the "MBR" (" " because we have GPT now) while bootrec is able to recover it when doing it manually)
Use Bootrec.exe in the Windows RE to troubleshoot startup issues (microsoft.com)

- a corrupted BCD or missing entries cannot be fixed at all, even when though WinRE works fine. Interestingly 3rd Party Tools like Macrium Reflect fix these in seconds. I wonder why. 
If there are issue that prevent startup of Windows it is least likely something related to NTFS chkdsk (except the physical disk (HDD / SDD) has technical issues, but most of the time in the past 5 years it was something like missing bcd entries / bcd corruption or bootrec corruption.


On the article:
- another way to get into WinRE is to soft reset or turn off the PC / VM 2-3 times during boot. Not feasible is one can avoid it, can cause NTFS corruptions on drive C:. This also happens when auto restart for BSOD is configured (default)