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What is the WINRETOOLS partition and do I need it? (repurposed SSD)
I had a Dell XPS 13 that I took the SSD out of to use in my main desktop after the laptop's hinge broke beyond repair. I noticed a partition on it that I'm not sure what the purpose is, or if it is essential in any way called WINRETOOLS. I've already done a fresh install of Windows 10 from a new image (not the Dell recovery image), as well as deleted the DELLSUPPORT and Recovery image partitions as I basically want this to be a completely fresh SSD with none of the unnecessary stuff that came installed on my laptop as I don't want the extra bloatware or drivers. What does the WINRETOOLS partiton do, and will deleting it harm anything? I will also note that I had an issue with Bitlocker requiring the recovery key every boot before I had reinstalled Windows 10, so I used PowerShell to disable Bitlocker on it. Now that I've reinstalled Windows 10, I'm not able to turn Bitlocker on for my C: drive because it returns an error saying I lack the necessary TPM module. I have no idea if this is related, but just wanted to include it incase any important info for the Bitlocker encrytion is stored on WINRETOOLS that would cause my current OS to lock up or something.
Saltgrass
3 Apprentice
3 Apprentice
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4.3K Posts
1
August 16th, 2019 07:00
The Winre tools is the partition the system boots to for the repair tools in case of problems with the system. It is one of the Win 10 critical partitions.
I am not sure why you would need to use Powershell to turn off Bitlocker, then turn it back on, but the Powershell command won't re-enable it?
There are some Win 10 utilities for the TPM, look in the Windows\System32 folder for .exe or .msc files which start with TPM. I have not used them so I can't help with that but you may need to reinitialize your TPM.
WHChuang
35 Posts
0
September 18th, 2020 20:00
I'm in the process to clone my 2TB HDD (used less than 800MB) to 1TB SATA SSD, and want to use the new SATA SSD drive as my new boot Drive. So I'm assuming that when I do the clone'ing I will also need to clone that D drive (WINRETOOLS partition), right? Thanks!