Can't create a Windows 10 recovery usb drive. Some required files are missing

You might run a System file check on your install.  Open an administrative command prompt and type:

sfc /scannow

Report if errors are encountered.

Also in the command prompt type the command below and copy and paste the results.

reagentc /info

Since you appear to have altered your partitions, it does not look you have any OEM info (images, etc.) included.

If you uncheck the box to copy backup files, will the recovery drive complete?  If it does complete, how much the drive space was used.  How large is the USB drive?

I have run sfc /scannow and no errors were encountered.

I recently did a recovery from usb from Dell's recovery image for my laptop. Which is why I am trying to make a new one that is current with Windows updated and the drivers.

I did remove the original Dell recovery partition because I needed the space on my C: drive. I expected the recovery from Dell's image would have restored everything to it's factory state, but it did not.

I did try unchecking copy system files and it completed successfully.

Here is what reagentc / info gives me. It points to the Windows RE partition.

Thanks for your help.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /info

Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration

Information:

   Windows RE status:         Enabled

   Windows RE location:       \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE

   Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: f268a4cd-4563-11e7-a525-863c4edf65e3

   Recovery image location:

   Recovery image index:      0

   Custom image location:

   Custom image index:        0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

My system (9365) came without an actual factory image, but did allow for the reinstallation the OEM stuff.  The Win 10 image is created during the creation of the recovery drive, which is why it may take quite a while to create the drive.

Possibly something is going wrong during the creation of that image.  You path to Winre.wim looks fine so possibly the it is looking for the OEM info and cannot find it.

I will also mention that on one of my system, I had modified the drive configuration and the recovery drive would not complete.  After I removed the extra partition I created, it did complete.

You say the recovey drive has some folders.  If the Win 10 image is there you should have a couple of Reconstruct.wim files which add up to around  4.2 GB in the sources folder.

It doesn't seem the Downloadable recovery .iso file is capable of a factory restore.  The Dell folks in the forum seem to think it does, and the image is large enough to hold Win 10 and the OEM stuff.  The one I just completed did not return to system to factory, but I may have done something wrong.  A Win 10 recovery drive I made a few days ago, did return the system to factory.

I really can't think of anything to suggest you try, except perhaps try a larger USB drive.

I ran "sfc /scannow" and it did not report any problems. I also ran "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth" and "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth" both said No component store corruption detected.

The usb I used is 64 gb. The recovery process asked me for a usb with 16 gb of space. The usb is a usb 3 drive in case that matters.

A 64 GB drive may work but Win 10 can only format up to a 32 GB drive as FAT 32.   It may just leave the extra space empty and work anyway, but I have not used a 64 GB drive.

You are right. The drive is formatted to 32 GB and is FAT 32. The process puts several files on the drive, but crashes at maybe 10%. There is 359 MB of files on the drive that I described in the top post.

Does anyone have any ideas on why I cannot create a recovery drive?