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Because I made a terrible mistake, I had to completely reinstall Windows 11 on my Asus Vivobook laptop. This Asus laptop have a MyAsus partition and a Recovery partition. I know these partitions are used by MyAsus in WinRe which is a system developed by Asus to add a MyAsus menu to the Windows 11 WinRE.

I have lost this integration because of my manual reinstallation. Because the partitions remain, I may only have to rewrite the Boot Configuration Data to relink the partitions. I am afraid however that it might need more than that...

Does someone have a bcdedit /enum output to share with an Asus Vivobook (I don't think exact model matter in this case) so that I could try to tweak mine with the aid of an example. Or maybe an idea to solve this problem?

Thank you very much!

Julien Kosinski
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    Probably easiest to get the ASUS recovery media. You can use that now and then again at a later date if you need it. – John Mar 15 '24 at 11:46
  • Thanks, I see that I can create a Windows recovery drive, but is there an ASUS specific thing here I could make? The main idea is to automatically keep drivers when wiping Windows (I would prefer to be able to have all functionalities but, at least, that's the most useful one). – Julien Kosinski Mar 15 '24 at 12:05
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    You would need to install (Windows will find numerous drivers) and then find all the remaining drivers you need. Perhaps do that and then get the ASUS media. Yes, vendors have specific things in their recovery images, often around support. – John Mar 15 '24 at 12:09
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    Will the machine boot to WinRE? If not, see ReAgentC and the commands in Step #4 (Skip the first command). Does the MyAsus partition have a custom WinRE WIM (it'll have a restore image WIM or Split WIMs [.swm], but if it has a custom WinRE WIM, it may not be named winre.wim, but would be ~350MB, possibly larger depending on their recovery software sizes) – JW0914 Mar 15 '24 at 12:10
  • @JulienKosinski Clean installing Windows in that way wouldn't be the recommended way - clean install Windows, install CPU drivers first, configure Windows Update to install drivers, run Windows Update & reboot until no more updates are found, install remaining custom Asus software from the support page, then capture a WIM of the OS partition from WinPE/WinRE. To clean install Windows on the same machine, boot to WinPE/WinRE and apply the WIM (do the same, but append to the first WIM, after installing all software to have a backup to restore from) – JW0914 Mar 15 '24 at 12:23
  • The minimal thing I'd wish is to be able to restore to factory and, if I resell my computer, non-power users can properly use the computer. The user need to be able to do the same too. @JW0914, with this in mind, capturing a WIM seems to be my best bet here, I'm not sure however how to make it can be then automatically used for system factory reset. Could you confirm it is possible? Thank you very much! – Julien Kosinski Mar 15 '24 at 12:30
  • @JulienKosinski OEM Recovery solutions are inefficient, locking the user to a restore image created at the factory, and since most use read-only Split-WIMs [.swm] (WIMs that have been split into specific max size segments, such as 4GB), the user can never append an updated image to it, resulting in extremely old versions of Windows being restored to, often with software bloat, lacking all software, user data, and customizations the user has made since getting the machine. Using your own WIM bypasses all of that, the only inconvenience being it must be captured/applied from WinPE/WinRE. – JW0914 Mar 15 '24 at 12:36
  • @JulienKosinski (Cont'd...) I will eventually add a script to the answer I linked to for automating the capture, append, and apply processes, as I wrote a script for it that will auto-boot the machine to WinRE, and the user chooses from a few prompts in WinRE what they want to do, but I didn't realize some of the commands for those questioned prompts don't work in WinPE after I tested it; once I have that fixed, it'll get added to that answer to make it automated and more convenient – JW0914 Mar 15 '24 at 12:43
  • @JW0914 Thank you very much! This seems to be perfect! Will definitely wait for it! :) – Julien Kosinski Mar 15 '24 at 12:49
  • @JW0914 It's unclear to me however, once the imaging is done, the image can't be linked to the factory reset Windows functionality? It needs to be applied manually in WinPE, right? – Julien Kosinski Mar 15 '24 at 12:55
  • @JulienKosinski It can and is called a PBR [Push-Button Reset] ESD image - a PBR option can be configured on the WinRE Advanced Options Menu. The captured WIM would be exported to ESD via Dism /Export-Image /SourceImageFile:"Z:\Base.wim" /SourceIndex:1 /DestinationImageFile:"Z:\PBR.esd" /Compress:Recovery /CheckIntegrity (/SourceIndex would be the image index within the WIM to be exported to ESD, as WIMs can hold several images - to ascertain: Dism /Get-ImageInfo /ImageFile:Z:\Base.wim) – JW0914 Mar 15 '24 at 13:22
  • @JW0914 Great! Thanks again. I don't see PBR in WinRE Advanced Options Menu. Could you elaborate this part? – Julien Kosinski Mar 15 '24 at 13:38
  • @JulienKosinski Please see the PBR man page I linked to in the previous comment and the WinRE man page, specifically this and this – JW0914 Mar 15 '24 at 14:13

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