"Feature updates" versus System Reserved Partition?

[gerwin]

At work I need to put Windows 10 on some older Hardware. Z68 Chipset based. BIOS and MBR config. SATA SSD 500 or 1000 GB. 8 to 16GB RAM.

I already had a test setup for it, from 2020 already, with Windows 10 installed from CD with some unfinished SysPrep intentions.

Decided to connect it to the internet and let Windows Update run. Unfortunately, The 21H2 Feature update repeatedly failed. It is detailed as error 0xc1900200, Which may mean that the system requirements are not met.

Now I suspect it is because back in 2020 I did not let it create a "System Reserved Partition". Thinking; Such dependency would just complicate the backup and imaging of the OS. I am not sure though if that is the sole reason. Windows recovery "bootcfg" failed too, saying "access denied".

So instead I made a 22H2 install media on USB stick, and installed it like that. This works and runs, but the partitions are unchanged afterwards. so again no System Reserved Partition. No complaints from Windows setup about that (just the usual Windows 10 silly questions and remarks, styled as if the computer is a person now).

On one hand I think I should retry and make such a partition in some way. On the other hand I read here that 22H2 is the last feature update, in which case I don't really need to ever do a feature update again, and I can just as well leave it alone.