Windows Recovery Environment update fails successfully, says Microsoft The three wise Microsoft monkeys have spoken. If Windows Update displayed an error after installing the April 2025 Windows Recovery Environment release, you didn't see anything. Best to ignore it and move on. The software, KB5057589, was released for Windows 10 devices on April 8 and, according to Microsoft, "installs …
I tried that, but it just printed out?:
No working init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.
See Linux Documentation/admin-guide/init.rst for guidance.
I needed to try one of these to get a booting computer; https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html - it turns out you need to install GNU/Linux-libre to get a working computer?
"Although the error message suggests the update did not complete, the WinRE update is typically applied successfully after the device restarts," Microsoft adds.
That's like walking up to an info kiosk stuck in the middle of a trackless desert and finding a featureless map with a red star labelled, "You may be here."
Really, the knee-jerking around here...
""Although the error message suggests the update did not complete, the WinRE update is typically applied successfully after the device restarts"
sounding like, and meaning, there was a dependency that prevented WinRE from updating whilst the OS kept that dependent system online. Once offline, via the reboot, the update installs successfully.
In other words, the error message is correct at that moment in time, of the WinRE package attempting to run. Just as Linux would have told you - 'I can't install that package right now Dave, there is a locked dependency." If MS is guilty of anything, it is:
a) not stating why the update failed in (stating the dependency), and
b) not following up with a full "Update properly installed" status later, on the same Settings page (rather than simply clearing it out without an explanation).
Maybe Linux does something like this better. But, also, maybe not - it depends upon the package.
Saying it failed is still incorrect, if it's just pending a restart to finish replacing files. All their other updates that have to replace locked files just say "pending restart", after all. It's also an update to the WinRE partition, which should never be locked/in-use while the normal operating system is up. Microsoft themselves have provided instructions for completely deleting and rebuilding the WinRE partition while Windows is running. These updates just need to perform the same process using the new version of the WinRE image file, which is a relatively small file that they could download rather than "patching" the existing image.
The real issue is that this is I think the 4th time they've released an update for the WinRE partition which has failed with this exact same error code. They just cannot seem to get the process right. The only difference this time is that supposedly it does actually get installed and the error will clear, but time will tell whether that's actually true. They're not blaming it on the WinRE partition being too small, this time. The previous times, the update would not actually ever install, but the error would sometimes clear, then re-appear the next time updates ran and it tried to install again, and Microsoft would provide a complicated and potentially risky set of command line instructions for adjusting what was patently NOT the problem (the failure occurred regardless of the size of the partition for many people). Or at one point provided the manual method to install the patch then said "now you can just ignore the error that will continue to appear when updates run, even though the WinRE has been updated".
Given I successfully fixed the previous occurrence of this issue *on multiple machines* by deleting and recreating a larger WinRE partition using those instructions, your claim that it was just a blame-game, and not the actual problem is clearly false. However, with Microsoft, it is entirely possible that there are multiple causes of this issue...
My WinRE partition is 2GB in size now. It should only need to be 512MB at most for a standard English-only install (the WinRE image that gets copied to it is a whopping 128MB in size). I had it at 1GB because of some previous issues related to the size some years ago. I increased it again the first time this failure occurred, just to see if it would help. Every time they've released one of these updates, I've gotten the failure message over and over, across weeks of updates running, until it finally went away on its own. At one point they told people how to manually install the update using the patch from the Microsoft Update Catalog (which I did) but specifically mentioned that you'd STILL get the error message even though your system had the security fix involved.
The sheer fact that they've released MULTIPLE updates that do the same underlying thing (updating the WinRE image) but they also all FAIL to install for so many people, and the only "fix" they can suggest involves using command line tools to modify your partitions, and THAT doesn't always fix the problem, shows that they've got some major underlying broken code that they either can't figure out how to fix or just don't care enough to put the resources into doing it, and decided that it's okay to just pass responsibility off to their customers.
Not necessarily - for example, I have driver updates disabled because Windows kept installing an old driver over my video cards New driver. Plugged I a new piece of hardware (that actually doesn't need a driver), Windows tried to install the "recommended" driver anyway, totally unbootable, even after the device was physically removed.
So, reset PC, data safe but have to reinstall and reconfigure all programs. And remove deal like OneDrive, etc.
Most "drivers" are basically spyware nowadays. Machine runs just fine without them. Some of the nastier ones (Armory Crate, poorly written, very inefficient) require a reformat and restore from backups to get rid of every trace.
Public Service Announcement:
Windows will install and execute programs (in my case part of the Armory Crate) from the ASUS BIOS unless you disable it in BIOS. Other motherboards can also do this.
What idiot thought this was a good idea ?!?!
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4438288
Warming to my theme and amusing myself (and only myself, I know), I suppose a "Death Knoll" would be
I HAVE LAID MY SCYTHE AND LIFE-TIMERS OUT NEATLY ON THE DESK. I LIKE IT THAT WAY. IT MAKES THEM EASY TO FIND.
(SQUEAK)
OH, IT'S YOU AGAIN. STAY OFF MY DESK.
Icon - a pint of Winkle's raised to the memory of Sir Terry -->
Escape goat - https://youtu.be/gZE85L2XHSc?si=r4zdI91bLACJ-PMY&t=1090 - and many others in this full episode of Dave Gorman's Modern Life is Good-ish. All episodes of Modern Life is Good-ish are worth a look. Plus his Googlewack program, all available on his YT channel - Gorm Hub - https://www.youtube.com/@davegorman235/videos
Sorry snee :-)
reporting the same 0x80070643 generic install failure to some users, rather than something more helpful.
Windows is full of these types of messages.
Almost inevitably a search for the specific code or wording will come up with some kind of definition along the lines of "there's been some sort of failure in something somewhere"
I had this last month, when they released a fix (KB5050411) for a WinRE update (KB5048239) they released the month before was failing to install for some people
In my case the original fix had fixed the problem but the fixed fix wasn't installing properly. It would appear as fixed but the version number wasn't being updated, so a reboot and it reappeared as an update... in the end I uninstalled the original fix and let it install the fixed fix
(KB5057589 replaces KB5050411 which replaced KB5048239)
I have a screenshot of the end result of installing some software on a WinNT Server way back in practically pre-history. It says "The XXXXX service depends on the YYYYY service which failed to start because of the following error: The operation completed successfully."
Yeah, got called into work in the dead of the night because the NT server that was the primary for DNS resolution malfunctioned. The secondary DNS box, another NT server, also had malfunctioned. I restarted them. In looking into the problem the resolution came down to...drum roll...a faulty printer driver.
There's an issue with the April W11 and Server 2025 CU on some machines too, in that it fails to install with an unhelpful generic error code. All the usual tactics (downloading the full installer from the Microsoft Catalog site, deleting the update cache, etc, fail to work.
A user on another forum said the only solution they'd found was to download the Windows ISO and effectively do an in-place upgrade to the same version, keeping files, folders and settings when asked. I tried that and it does work, I think.
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