Update KB5034441 fails to install

Hay, all! Just want to share my expereince here...

The work around in KB5028997 did not work for me out of the bat... but I was able to install the KB8034441 update after I was able to successfully resize the WinRE partition from 510MB to 1010MB.

I tried to follow the instructions on KB5028997 to resize my WinRE partition and everything was going well until I got to the point where it is asking to format the partition (step 5b). The format command was unable to complete the command successfully because there was no volume in the partition:

I have a gpt disk and this is was the partition layout after expanding/re-creating the WinRE partitiion:

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    System             100 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    Reserved            16 MB   101 MB
  Partition 3    Primary             98 GB   117 MB
* Partition 4    OEM               1010 MB    99 GB

This is the error I am getting when I tried to issue the format command:

DISKPART> format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows RE Tools"

There is no volume selected.
Please select a volume and try again.

So I attempted to create a volume inside the partition but it does not like that either:

DISKPART> create volume

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.3636

RAID        - Create a software RAID-5 volume set.
SIMPLE      - Create a simple volume.
STRIPE      - Create a stripe volume set.
MIRROR      - Create a mirror volume set.

DISKPART> create volume simple

A disk specified is not dynamic.
Please specify a dynamic disk and try again.

I also tried to format the newly created partition using the Disk Management GUI but there were no options to format... What I ended up doing is deleting the partition and using Disk Maangement to re-create /format it. After re-enabling WinRE, I have re-tried the failed update and it went through successfully. Hope this helps someone out there - good luck!

I do not understand ANY of this.

I am not tech proficient enough to safely repartition drives!

After 4 hours my system still has an "Installing" spinner. I tried installing this last night 17 April 2024.

My system update history shows the last successful update was malicious software removal tool kb890830 on 10 April 2024. A quick scroll through the list on settings shows kb numbers in the 800s.

I saw this thread started back in January. If this is a critical security update why hasn't this been resolved or replaced by now (4 MONTHS later) with an update that will install without damaging applications or hanging Windows10 systems?

UPDATE: I contacted Microsoft Support and they still say to wait for a fix. They advise against repartitioning.

The required minimum is 250 MB of free space which you cannot judge from the partition size. If 518 MB were the amount that counts, virtually nobody would be affected as virtually everybody has that size or more.

The stated workaround:

**Workaround:**It might be necessary to increase the size of the WinRE partition in order to avoid this issue and complete the installation. Note that 250 megabytes of free space is required in the recovery partition. Guidance to change the WinRE partition size can be found in KB5028997: Instructions to manually resize your partition to install the WinRE update.

My info:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /info

Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration

Information:

Windows RE status:         Enabled 

Windows RE location:       \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk2\partition3\Recovery\WindowsRE 

Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: 07f6ea74-a860-11ea-bf9c-c18d0d23aeac 

Recovery image location: 

Recovery image index:      0 

Custom image location: 

Custom image index:        0

This says you need at least 250MB but my Disk 2 partition 3 according to the PART function shows as 518MB so already twice the required minimum so I shouldn't need to resize it