Impossible to create a recovery stick for Blade 14 (2023)

By looking at the contents, the recover “image” PI490_WW_E22H2_T29.zip indeed has WinRE and not WinPE (there is Winre.wmi) file.

Is Razer providing unusable recovery images?

Any updates on this?

I’m running into the same thing on my Blade 16 (2024).  The recovery image provided by Razer says to extract to an NTFS-formatted drive, but the system can’t use that drive to recover because it throws a “Only support running under WinPE” error.  I’ve seen other posts that recommend trying FAT32 instead of NTFS, but that won’t work for this image because there are files >4GB.

How is this recovery system supposed to work?

I went with a complicated approach and repacked windows installation archives using `wimlib` on my Linux machine. I’ve removed some stuff related to recovery and split the archives in 4GB chunks to fit on Fat32.

I think you can try a different more simple approach. Create a bootable NTFS drive from an official Windows image using Rufus (don’t just burn ISO to your flash drive, it won’t work, use Rufus!).

After that, test your flash drive to make sure it’s bootable, but don’t install windows. Then simply copy the contents of the recovery archive on that flash drive,  boot again and start installation.

Thanks, but #3 from your original list ended up working for me - I just used the built-in Windows tool to create a recovery USB (including system files), then shut down, swapped the M.2 SSD for the new one, booted that up and it had no problems detecting the drive or reinstalling Windows.

Running into similar issues with a Razer Blade 14 2024. The instructions themselves are incorrect -https://mysupport.razer.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2044 - when you create the recovery drive in Windows it formats the USB stick that you just created in the previous steps. :)

I imaged my stock 1TB drive using Macrium to a new 990 Pro 4TB and even though i’ve done this at least a half a dozen times without issue - this time it gave a recovery partition C:\ which borked the bootup. I stupidly deleted that partition - which got me into Windows - but now it won’t cleanly shutdown and I can’t create the recovery drive on my Blade - so I am using another PC. I’m lucky I have that option - many will not.

I wonder why they don’t just provide an all-in-one USB to get it reformatted??

For anyone reading this - the instructions at https://mysupport.razer.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2044 should be: format 32GB or higher thumb drive as NTFS, create USB Windows 11 media (you can do this via the recovery drive method as they state - or by just going here and selecting “Create Windows 11 Installation Media” - once complete, check that it is NTFS (if not, copy files on USB off to your computer, format to NTFS, copy files back). If it is - you’re golden.

Now - take the recovery files zip you downloaded for your laptop - and copy it over the files at the root of the USB stick.

Now you have a bootable USB re-imager for your laptop. I’m currently at 48%.

its much easier than it seems its just a shame that Razer didn’t make it very clear in the instructions. Format usb as described while downloading your specific recovery image from Razer. Once downloaded extract all to usb drive . Once extracted eject usb and insert into Razer boot to boot picker and select usb and that’s it.