Update: Microsoft has a new update on this detailing the requirements for installation of this WinRE update.
Microsoft released the first Windows 10 and 11 Patch Tuesday updates of 2024 on the 9th with January"s KB5034122 and KB5034123 respectively.
In a separate article, the company also detailed another security fix for a BitLocker Secure Boot bypass vulnerability that is being tracked under ID "CVE-2024-20666." Microsoft said that the security flaw could allow threat actors to bypass BitLocker encryption if they managed to get physical access to an unpatched PC.
The issue was addressed by KB5034441 (on Windows 10) and KB5034440 (on Windows 11) which were WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment) updates.
Microsoft, however, also cautioned that inadequate space on the recovery partition could lead to a "0x80070643 - ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE" error message when trying to install the WinRE WIM (Windows Imaging Format) update.
The issue can be resolved by allocating an additional 250 MB of storage space to the recovery partition. Details on how to do that can be found in this dedicated article.
The company had promised a fix was in the works, and later also officially confirmed that those without a WinRE partition could entirely skip it.
However, at least on Windows 10, Microsoft has acknowledged that an automatic resolution for this issue will not be released and as such, the only way to fix this is manually. Microsoft says:
Resolution: Automatic resolution of this issue won"t be available in a future Windows update. Manual steps are necessary to complete the installation of this update on devices which are experiencing this error.
The WinRE partition requires 250 megabytes of free space. Devices which do not have sufficient free space will need to increase the size of the partition via manual action. For guidance on making this change, review the following resources:
- A code script can be used to extend the partition size. A sample script has been provided in the documentation for adding an update package to WinRE. See Extend the Windows RE Partition.
- Guidance to manually change the WinRE partition size can additionally be found in KB5028997: Instructions to manually resize your partition to install the WinRE update.
Completion of these manual steps will allow the installation of this update to succeed.
Hence, it looks like Microsoft has given up on an automatic fix for the issue at least on Windows 10. Hopefully, the same does not happen with Windows 11 as the issue is still open there.