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Veeam Agent – Windows recovery image file not found

KB ID: 2685
Product: Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows | 3.0.2 | 4.0 | 5.0
Published: 2018-07-12
Last Modified: 2021-08-23
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Challenge

Veeam Recovery Media Creation process is failing. The error will typically be:

  
Windows recovery image file not found

Cause

Veeam Recovery Environment is built off the Windows Recovery Environment, and the Recovery Environment is made from the Windows Preinstallation Environment.
If a system is missing the Windows PE/RE components, Veeam Recovery Media will fail to create.

 

Solution

The resolution steps below will require 8GB or more free space on the disk specified in the DISM commands.

The missing Windows Recovery Environment files will need to be copied from the Windows Installation media to the running system to resolve this issue.

You should perform the following steps on the machine which is having the issue.

  1. Mount the Windows Installation ISO, or insert the installation media

  2. Using Windows Explorer, check the "sources" folder on the Windows install media:
    1. If install.wim is present, skip to step 4
    2. if install.esd is present, proceed to step 3
       
  3. Using the DISM Export-Image function, extract the install.wim from the install.esd file in the install media:
How to export install.wim from install.esd file

First, using the DISM Get-ImageInfo function, determine which Index ID inside the install.esd matches the installed version of Windows.

Modify file paths as needed for your environment. 

dism /get-imageinfo /imagefile:D:\sources\install.esd

In this example, the machine had Windows 10 Pro installed, and using the previous command, Index #6 matched that version.

The /Compress switch must be included, if not the resulting wim file will fail to mount using DISM.

 Dism /Export-image /SourceImageFile:D:\sources\install.esd /SourceIndex:6 /DestinationImageFile:C:\tempsources\install.wim /Compress:fast /CheckIntegrity
  1. Using the DISM Mount-Image function, mount the install.wim:
    Correct file paths as needed depending on the location of the install.wim
DISM /Mount-image /imagefile:D:\sources\install.wim /Index:1 /MountDir:C:\dism /readonly /optimize
  1. Copy WinRe.wim and ReAgent.xml files from the mounted image to the system's C:\Windows\System32\Recovery folder:

    Note: The example command will overwrite all data in the C:\Windows\System32\Recovery folder with content from the mounted image.

    (WinRe.wim is a system file and is hidden by default, as such, you won't be able to see the file once it's copied to the target location.)
robocopy /MIR C:\dism\Windows\System32\Recovery\ C:\Windows\System32\Recovery
  1. Enable Recovery image using REAgentC
reagentc /setreimage /path C:\Windows\System32\Recovery
  1. Using the DISM Unmount-Image function, unmount the image mounted in Step 4.
    Note: If the install.wim was extracted from an install.esd file, you can manually delete it during this step.
Dism /Unmount-image /MountDir:C:\dism /discard
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