My computer got a virus and winre.wim is missing (RE disabled)

I was able to locate the WINRE.WIM in the partition G: (the one with 632 MB), the recovery partition, whose size I have increased with the help of EaseUS.

Directory of G:\Recovery\WindowsRE

09/Oct/2020 09:15 PM <DIR> .

09/Oct/2020 09:15 PM <DIR> ..

07/Dec/2019 05:08 AM 3,170,304 boot.sdi

09/Oct/2020 09:15 PM 1,109 ReAgent.xml

28/Jul/2020 03:54 AM 556,723,434 Winre.wim

3 File(s) 559,894,847 bytes

2 Dir(s) 617,586,688 bytes free

I was able to successfully start the Recovery agent, so success!!

However, even with 1GB in the recovery partition, the update is still not working. Not sure why. If somebody has any tips please let me know! :)

Last update, I closed all the apps that might be locking the recovery partition (Explorer, EaseUS, etc.) and then it seems Windows Updates finally was able to update "package 2024-01 Security Update for Windows 10 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems" (KB5034441).

However I am totally puzzled that the used space in the partition hasn't changed. I wonder why that is. When I check for updates again it says that "You're up-to-date". Also, I don't see the option to recover the system from an image.

Ideas?

You're question. Is winRE failing because KB5034441 does not install?
The answer is no. There's not enough space to download the update. So this update does not install either.
The update is to address issues with encrypting and decrypting drives. If you don't use that your fine anyway

your "list partition" shows no partition of about 550 MB, that should be the recovery-partition.

I'm a bit confused here.

you have the recovery-part in a volume. That means that you have attached a driver-letter to it.

That implies that the windows-system has acces to it. That seams strange.

The whole winRE-system is meant to always be able to start even if windows is failing.

What i did was a fresh install of windows from the MediaCreationtool USB-Stick and I emptied the whole SSD during the install.

Now the installation proces can freely create partitions.

That resulted in a SSD with the EFI-partition (100MB), MSR-partition (16MB), Windows-partition(118GB) and Recovery-part(554MB)

The order of these partitions is important and is now different from previous installs.

The Recovery-partition needs a partition in front to be able to create emtpy space next to it.

Then i made the Windows-partition smaller. And added that space to the Recovery-partition.

The way to know if WINRE is active is

reagentc /info

if it is not then activate

reagentc /enable

There's a lot of info on the internet. I am not sure where to begin yet. I'm looking and reading but don't get anywhere yet. Not into chatGPT as of now.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-technet-forums/d7654814-72d1-414e-9020-ded4167e38f5

Thanks for your reply. I have figured everything already.

I was able to grab winre.wim from the recovery partition.

I was able to resize the recovery partition thinking that Windows would update my files in that partition, but that is just for windows 11, when what I have is windows 10. That's why those files stayed the same.

I'm all good now, even though I'm still trying to find what's going wrong with my system. It's almost like it's a virus, though it may be being cause by my disabling of Chrome updates (Google is very shady).

IF you have issues consider doing a Clean install with a USB, Go into a Web Browser then type in aka.ms/Windows10MediaCreationTool, next click on the download it will ask to make changes, click yes, now accept the license agreement then choose your language and edition hit yes, now with your USB in hand click next let it finish downloading then click finish boot into bios with restart spam the DEL key then after that change the boot order to USB after that now click exit out of BIOS then it will show you the booting screen follow each step carefully once your done boom you got a good install.

the computer runs, but I am extremely annoyed by a goddamn virus.

I have the impression it can't make serious damage due to maybe new security features, but it's annoying as hell.

Of course the stupid windows defender is not able to detect anything. I wonder what it is.

Right now for example it keeps bringing up WMP as I'm trying to type. sometimes sound doesn't play correctly. All sorts of issues.

Hopefully this is not Mossad people breaking into my computer due to my anti-IL stance, Lol. But from those people I don't doubt anything.

I'm lazy to have to reinstall everything though, I wanna find out what's going on. Please see the symptoms in the OP.