Best Time to Make a Windows 10 Recovery Drive? - Comments Page 1

Re: paragraph starting with "If you don't have an OEM (vendor-supplied) recovery partition,...". What is a recovery partition and how do I know if I have one? Also, I don't really understand the rest of that paragraph.

Clicked on your link ProduKey and when I clicked on Save, Windows blocked it as severe threat.

Bob,

Some time ago I prepared an usb stick using windows installation media (about 16 gb) from their website. Is this the same as a recovery drive? In your article you describe creating a recovery drive and then after that adding installation media.is that any different from my procedure?

Regards from Holland

Hi,
When I try to get the Product Key by the first method suggested I get an error message ".OA3xOriginalProductKey was unexpected at this time."
When I download the Nirsoft program it gets flagged as malware by both Malwarebytes and Windows Defender:
"Trojan:Win32/Sehyioa.A!cl
Detected by Microsoft Defender Antivirus".

I tried POWERSHELL, copy and pasted the command which yielded nothing several times.

Also clicked on Produkey link and PCMatic flagged it. I allowed it once but PCMatic again flagged it. I won't try that again.

1. Will my recovery drive work on other PC's, or only the PC it's made on?

2. Can a recovery drive do anything that can't be done with a current bootable Windows 10 installation media?

3. Should I make a new recovery drive each time I upgrade to a new Feature Update? (New Windows 10 version)

Thank you.

This article is straigthforward until the paragraph: "If you don't have an OEM (vendor-supplied) recovery partition, you can add Windows 10 installation files to the recovery drive by downloading the Windows 10 Media Creation tool, using it to create an ISO file, double-clicking to mount the ISO file in Explorer, and then dragging the complete contents of the mounted drive to your recovery drive."
This part if just gibberish. How do you know if you have an OEM partition? Where do you find the media creation tool. What do you mean, mount the iso file in explorer?

'Some important files are missing on your PC' Recovery drive cannot be created...

What are these files?

How can I proceed if at all? thank you.

Does the recovery drive need updating - such as when Windows 10 has periodic monthly updates?

Thanks Bob. the Powershell cmd didn't produce any info, but the ProduKey application worked.

For the users here complaining about their antivirus blocking ProduKey, the Nirsoft website states:

When running produkey.exe, some Antivirus programs display an alert and/or block you from running it.

If your Antivirus software shows a false alert, you can use the following article that explains how to send a report about a false positive issue to your Antivirus company:
How to Report Malware or False Positives to Multiple Antivirus Vendors

Go for Linux and avoid all this $*&@~#!

Bob, your PS command did not work on my PC. Maybe because Win10 is an upgrade from Win7?

Hi Bob,
I got the same threat alert by Windows as did Jack Anderson, Gunnar, and others, namely "Trojan:Win32/Sehyioa.A!cl
Detected by Microsoft Defender Antivirus".
This was among other scary virus notifications. However, and I hope that I did not install a virus, I was able to install it by opening the download folder, then right clicking over the produkey_setup.exe file and click on "Run as administrator". Then I had to give a few virus detectors the okay. I wish I had done, and strongly recommend that you do, a restore first before executing this exe file.
Bob S.

You can get your Product Key and your complete system and applications information with the free BELARC ADVISER.

My product keys on both my computers are only 20 characters, not 25 Bob.

I just went through this a couple of weeks ago, and the USB drive that I thought I had made into a recovery drive didn't work. I couldn't boot off it. So I used a different computer to go to the Windows website and make the same flash drive into a recovery drive. It still didn't work. As a last resort, I tried using a different flash drive, and it worked just fine. The first flash drive was USB3 and the second one was USB2. Apparently, my computer wouldn't boot off the USB3 drive for some reason. That's probably hardware dependent, but the lesson learned is to make a recovery drive, then make sure you can boot off it, before you actually need it. You can boot off the recovery drive and then just abort the recovery without making any changes. That way, you know it works.

I have never seen Bob reply to any questions posed in the comments section of any of his posts.
To those asking how to tell if their computers contain a "recovery partition." Type Disk Management in the start search bar. When the results show - "Create and Format hard disk partitions" click on that and open it full screen. This will show all your connected drives. If your computer contains a recovery partition it will be shown as such under one of the Disks. Mine shows as 995 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)

If you download the Nirsoft program directly from their website you may be assured it has no virus. To run it anyway, try this: Start > Settings > Update and Security > Windows Security > App and Browser Control. Loosen the restrictions found in the settings there and try Nirsoft again. Be sure to put the restrictions back where you found them when you finish.

Yeah, I got lost after the 2nd paragraph. Discouraged by all the commenters, I will resolve to take my machine to a nerd.

Here is a big Thank You! to Walt who reminded me that I can get my Windows10 Product Key in the Free Belarc Advisor!

On the Belarc Advisor Report Web Page, scroll down to the Licenses Section. I am running the Pro version so it is listed as "Microsoft - Windows 10 Professional (x64) #####-#####-#####-##### (Key: #####-#####-#####-#####-#####)". I have replaced the pertinent information with Hash-marks for obvious reasons :)

I hope this helps someone,

Ernie