Windows update (KB5034441) Error (0x80070643)

Ditto.

1. The ideal answer is they "fix" the update so it can be applied to any system "as is" - knowing that may not be possible...
2. A software update that re-sizes the WIN_RE partition, enables it., it --- doesn't seem that hard and would be best for the average user

or

3. as posted elsewhere, an update that fixes the scripts/catalog.

I have managed to update one machine by following the detailed MS instructions, but what then 'puzzles me', is that having created this nice large recovery partition and the update working, the new enlarged recovery partition remains almost entire empty. So quite why is this enlarged recovery partition necessary given it doesn't seem to be used? You appear to go to all this manual reconfiguration only for it to apparently be u4necessary.

And of course, as a lot of people here say, they are not comfortable about doing any of this. That is a wholly reasonable response, and indeed it's not just a case of 'too technical', deleting, resizing and creating partitions on a machine is a pretty low-level reconfiguration of the device and has all the potential for bricking the machine if it goes wrong. Add on warnings about doing the resizing on SSDs and that the caching of storage writes on these can result in 'expected consequences', just adds to concerns even for those who are 'technical enough' to do the partition resizing.

It is 'more than sad' that MS seem to take no interest in this problem, don't post anything to ally fears of bricking SSD or other machines, advise whether there will be a later security update that will negate the need for 2024-01 KB5034441, or give any advice whatsoever.

The HDD layout of the machine I have reconfigured and which then accepted the KB5034441 is below:

• Ignore the unallocated space at the end. That is a result of a replacement HDD of 2x the size of the original, re-imaging the old disk onto the new, meaning only the original 500GB was re-imaged onto a 1TB disk leaving the rest of the disk unallocated ... helpful for this particular update!
• Note the 1GB Windows RE tools partition created to enable this update to go through (now visible as drive E:)
• Note that 1000MB partition has only 18.4MB used, with 981MB (98%) free

I think the original recovery partition was either 250 or 500MB and the MS advise was to increase by 250MB. Because of the unallocated space on the disk I just gave it a whole 1GB, but why was this necessary? Given just 18.4MB is actually used after this update completes, why the need to add 250MB to what is likely an existing 250MB or larger pre-existing recovery partition?

I started working with computers in 1971 and it amazes me that MS either can't fix the problem (and that's possible) OR generate a one-click "FIXIT" for their customers.

While I could have used the command prompts I wanted to test out a theory that if - as MS said - the issue is the partition size of the WIN_RE partition I used a partition manager tool that I had to increase its size. Still failed until I re-read the commands and noticed reagentc /enable. I ran only that after increasing the size of the partition and it is working so far.

MS should be making a download and run fix for this but my hybrid solution of using a partition manager and the one command prompt seems to work.

Indeed, the solution is ofcourse: Microsoft have to do its job.

For now imho the answer is what I published before in this post, which is not resizing partitions, but fix it with the official Microsoftscript together with a downloadable KB from the Microsoft catalogsite.

I started working with computers in 1971 and it amazes me that MS either can't fix the problem (and that's possible) OR generate a one-click "FIXIT" for their customers.

While I could have used the command prompts I wanted to test out a theory that if - as MS said - the issue is the partition size of the WIN_RE partition I used a partition manager tool that I had to increase its size. Still failed until I re-read the commands and noticed reagentc /enable. I ran only that after increasing the size of the partition and it is working so far.

MS should be making a download and run fix for this but my hybrid solution of using a partition manager and the one command prompt seems to work.

True and while I can use command prompts to do this a lot of people can't (or see diskpart as risky) so if the issue according to MS was that the WIN_RE partition was too small I was testing out changing it's size with a tool I already had and have used a lot over time to see if that did it. Disappointed that the tool did not enable the partition but it seems that reagentc /enable would be simple enough to use in conjunction with a partition manager.