The Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is a minimal operating system based on the Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) image that includes several tools to repair, reset, and diagnose Windows.
Windows RE consists of three files on a hidden Recovery Partition (in older versions of Windows, this partition was known as the System Reserved partition.)
winre.wim – WIM image with WinPE environment that includes additional Windows recovery tools;
boot.sdi – a System Deployment Image (SDI) file used to create an in-memory WinRE RAM disk;
ReAgent.xml — WindowsRE configuration file.
How to Boot Into the WinRE from Recovery Partition
a) To boot your computer into the Windows Recovery, hold down Shift and click the Restart button on the Start menu.
b) You can also restart the computer in WinRE mode from the command prompt using the /o option of the shutdown command:
shutdown /f /r /o /t 0
c) There is another command to force the system to boot into the Recovery Environment the next time the computer boots:
reagentc /boottore
d) The recovery environment should start automatically if there are problems with the normal Windows boot process. The recovery environment should start automatically if there are problems with the normal Windows boot process. For example, if three previous attempts to start Windows normally have failed, the computer will automatically boot into the Windows Recovery environment. This means that to boot your computer into WinRE, all you have to do is interrupt Windows boot by pressing the power button 3 times in a row.
