Still can't install Windows 10's January update? Microsoft fix isn't coming, you're on your own

It's hardly unusual for a Windows update to introduce a bug, but most of the time, Microsoft provides a solution in a reasonable timeframe - not always, mind, and not ever in this more recent case.

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Affected Windows 10 users likely won't be pleased (Image Credit: Microsoft)

Yes, this is a bit of an odd one, and it concerns the unlucky Windows 10 users who, when installing an update back in January 2024, encountered a Windows Recovery Environment error.

That installation failure error (stop code: 0x80070643) is related to the recovery partition not being large enough for the mentioned January security update (KB5034441).

As Microsoft explained, the WinRE partition needs 250MB of free space, and devices which don't have that need to increase the partition size.

Windows Latest spotted that on April 30, Microsoft updated its release health dashboard notes on this issue to say that it won't be providing any automatically delivered fix for this problem.

Microsoft stated:

"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."

There are possible workarounds, including a PowerShell script as Microsoft mentions in the above dashboard notes, but the trouble is they're manually implemented and on the fiddly side - hardly ideal, really.

As Windows Latest observes, if you don't want the hassle of manually navigating these WinRE partition waters yourself, then your options are limited to either ignoring the update (by hiding it), and leaving yourself without its security fix, or taking the drastic action of starting with a clean Windows 10 state, and reinstalling the OS from scratch. Ouch....

While this is not a bug that'll affect every Windows 10 user, by any means, it's been widely enough reported, and Windows Latest estimates thousands of folks are hit.

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