Windows update (KB5034441) Error (0x80070643)

Disk Management has turned blind for the drive letter through the protected partition id.

Try the following:

diskpart

select disk 0

select partition 3

remove

The partition seems to have its drive letter still assigned. :/

You're looking at an old image. I showed an after v before running (re-running!) reagentc /disable /enable. This is the prior to running. The partition now shows no drive letter as in the 'after' snap shown before...

But at the same time, in Explorer...

How's that for a tick 😎

Interesting the recovery disk still shows in Explorer.

The partition seems to have its drive letter still assigned. :/

I am curious what kind of Win OS Drive do you have? Is it GPT or MBR. This is important. It sounds like you have a MBR.

I have more than one device @lewcarver.

I have an old 'office' machine dedicated to running some accounting software a couple of times per month. This has rotating media, 1TB and is MBR. I ran through KB5028997: Instructions to manually resize your partition to install the WinREsome weeks back, giving it a 1GB recovery partition in the unused 500GB of the 'new' disk, and KB5034441 complete without error. This is the machine you have seen screen grabs from.

Despite KB5028997 being followed to the letter, the recovery partiiotn seems empty, but that's now been rectified by the reagentc /disable /enable change. Interesting the recovery disk still shows in Explorer.

But I have other machines, specifically this one, my main laptop, a Dell XPS 9360 with SSD. This machine us a GPT device. KB5028997 covers GPT devices, but I have these odd 3x and more than 12GB recovery partitions on this machine. I have not yet 'played' with this device, wishfully hoping for an update from MS. This doesn't seem to be materialising, but i have seen mention of KB5034441 having been withdrawn, although I'm not sure I believe that as this machine keeps attempting it ... at this moment in fact as I check again to see what it thinks.

I will consider this and another XPS 'shortly', but also have other things I need to get on with so it likely won't be today 🙂

Hi @Volume Z. I looked back and found a reference to 'critical considerations' when working on SSD, although I've seen several, just not gone back and found every one. On 14-Feb, page 11, Dave494 said...

For anyone else reading: it's very important to disable SSD over-provisioning on the OS drive using the SSD maker's tool or if you have Intel Optane (on the OS drive), make sure it's turned OFF (using the Intel app) before you resize the recovery partition to 1500 (1.5 GB), otherwise you will encounter problems or possibly data loss!

Please BACK UP important data saved on the Windows drive BEFORE YOU BEGIN, just in case.

You can re-enable Intel Optane or over-provisioning after resizing the partitions.

Follow the advice at your own risk.

Guess I need to check the controller for this SSD. I can see write caching is enabled, but guess I should research SSD over-provisioning and Intel Optane.

Optane may be the simple one: "a standalone memory device that is different from all the rest" and seems to sits as a 'L3' cache between processor and storage media, and doesn't seem to be an option on a Dell XPS 9360 (this laptop), so that's a pretty good lead to discount that one!

On the SS over-provisioning piece, Samsung publish quite a nice piece on SSD over-provisioning, 'wear-levelling' and some of the internal constraints of SS v magnetic media and explain: "This space (NAND flash to an over-provisioning space) can only be accessed by the SSD’s controller and not by the host" (lower part, page 2). They also publish 'Magician', a tool for reviewing and managing Samsung storage media. This includes a section for Over Provisioning, but it reports my PM981 NVMe 1TB drive isn't supported. Now off investigating any driver updates and the like. This update seems to be a wormhole that draws you ever in!