Windows Autopilot relies on Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) for certain tasks during the provisioning process. When a computer lacks the WinRE enviornment, you may encounter issues during an Windows Autopilot reset of the machine.
The Windows Recovery Environment is a minimal operating system used to troubleshoot and recover Windows installations.
To address this, it is recommended to ensure that WinRE is properly configured and available on devices intended for Autopilot provisioning. This involves checking the WinRE configuration, making sure it’s included in the Windows image, and ensuring it’s accessible during the Autopilot process. Additionally, keeping Windows installations up-to-date and following best practices for device provisioning can help mitigate these challenges.
I have never seen this be an issue on newer computers, but I have seen it many times in environments where the machines where images with a corporate image from Configuration Manager (or other imaging systems). Another common factor for these devices are they are all hybrid domain joined.
Microsoft gives us the command “reagentc” that we can use to check the WinRE status
- reagentc /info
- reagentc /enable
Many times, the reagentc /enable was all I needed for Windows to fix or create the missing recovery environment needed by Autopilot.
