Solved Macrium Reflect Success

Bree · May 24, 2023

callisto said:
You probably have a very good reason to manage so many computers, I hope it’s not a big family!

Just me, actually - but I do tend to collect PCs :wink:

I have a solid justification for the three most important ones, each serves a quite different purpose. After the next three the excuses get a bit tenuous....

bree said:
My machines fall into three main categories.

'Main machines' - the one's in daily use. There are 3 in this division, each justified by having its own job to do. System Three runs all my Hyper-V VMs, System One is my general purpose machine with all my photos, documents etc. and System Four (now replaced by Five) is my 'go anywhere' machine for taking on vacation etc.....

My 'league table' of machines

glasskuter · May 25, 2023

One can always make recovery media on a machine that has Macrium installed. Then boot any machine from the recovery media and make an image offline.

Zbooker · May 25, 2023

Bree said:
Some of us are gluttons for punishment

Typically I'm updating then backing up nine laptops each Patch Tuesday. I have a 4-pack of Macrium licences and use Reflect Free for all the others.

(I hate Patch Tuesday)

Yikes! 9??

And I thought I had my hands full with 3. LOL

Zbooker · May 25, 2023

glasskuter said:
One can always make recovery media on a machine that has Macrium installed. Then boot any machine from the recovery media and make an image offline.

Is it OK that I made a recovery USB from each Windows computer? Or would they have to be made by Macrium if you image by Macrium?

glasskuter · May 25, 2023

Zbooker said:
would they have to be made by Macrium

I keep calling it recovery media when actually the proper term is Macrium Rescue Media. And yes, to use Macrium rescue media one has to have their backups made using Macrium.

You make your rescue media from the computer on which Macrium is installed making sure to select the "Enable Multiboot (MBR/UEFI" option.
When you boot any system from this rescue usb recovery drive, it can be used on any computer to not only recover an image, but to create an image as well.

Creating rescue media - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

knowledgebase.macrium.com

EDIT: Please keep apprised about secure boot revocations imposed by CVE-2023-24932 and the latest May cumulative update.
Unless you manually apply these revocations, Macrium(or any other recovery media) will work as always until the beginning of 2024, when MS will automatically impose these revocations if secure boot is turned on. When this happens win PE on all recovery media will have to be updated as the current rescue media won't work any more. This is all up in the air right now. Macrium has not released any information as yet on what we should do. Once they do the gurus on this forum will give us more guidance. So watch this forum for more information.

cereberus · May 25, 2023

glasskuter said:
I keep calling it recovery media when actually the proper term is Macrium Rescue Media. And yes, to use Macrium rescue media one has to have their backups made using Macrium.

You make your rescue media from the computer on which Macrium is installed making sure to select the "Enable Multiboot (MBR/UEFI" option.
When you boot any system from this rescue usb recovery drive, it can be used on any computer to not only recover an image, but to create an image as well.

Creating rescue media - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

knowledgebase.macrium.com

EDIT: Please keep apprised about secure boot revocations imposed by CVE-2023-24932 and the latest May cumulative update.
Unless you manually apply these revocations, Macrium(or any other recovery media) will work as always until the beginning of 2024, when MS will automatically impose these revocations if secure boot is turned on. When this happens win PE on all recovery media will have to be updated as the current rescue media won't work any more. This is all up in the air right now. Macrium has not released any information as yet on what we should do. Once they do the gurus on this forum will give us more guidance. So watch this forum for more information.

In the short term, just temporarily turn off secure boot if you need to do a restore or if you are one of those "luddites" who only ever backup from WinPE.

I have seen it stated that these issues only affect the WinRe Rescue drives, and WinPE is ok, but I have yet to test this whole shebang.

It is not clear to me if these revocations modify the UEFI firmware i.e, once invoked, can you revert to the pre-revocation status. Does anybody know?

Zbooker · May 25, 2023

glasskuter said:
I keep calling it recovery media when actually the proper term is Macrium Rescue Media. And yes, to use Macrium rescue media one has to have their backups made using Macrium.

You make your rescue media from the computer on which Macrium is installed making sure to select the "Enable Multiboot (MBR/UEFI" option.
When you boot any system from this rescue usb recovery drive, it can be used on any computer to not only recover an image, but to create an image as well.

Creating rescue media - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

knowledgebase.macrium.com

EDIT: Please keep apprised about secure boot revocations imposed by CVE-2023-24932 and the latest May cumulative update.
Unless you manually apply these revocations, Macrium(or any other recovery media) will work as always until the beginning of 2024, when MS will automatically impose these revocations if secure boot is turned on. When this happens win PE on all recovery media will have to be updated as the current rescue media won't work any more. This is all up in the air right now. Macrium has not released any information as yet on what we should do. Once they do the gurus on this forum will give us more guidance. So watch this forum for more information.

Thanks glasskuter, I made a USB rescue media for each computer by Windows from Microsoft Support before I even had any Macrium software.
OK, thanks for the heads up.

Spunk · Jun 2, 2023

You only need 1 Macrium Reflect Rescue Media Flash Drive, unless you are backing up multiple computers at one time.

cereberus · Jun 2, 2023

Spunk said:
You only need 1 Macrium Reflect Rescue Media Flash Drive, unless you are backing up multiple computers at one time.

Nope - a rescue drive is often specific to a pc depending on drivers.

Spunk · Jun 2, 2023

I have used one Macrium Reflect Rescue Flash Drive on several computers. All it does is boot the computer to the Macrium Reflect GUI, it does not load any drivers.
Other Rescue Media from an OS or OEM manufacturer may include drives specific to the computer it was created on.

SIW2 · Jun 2, 2023

That is unusual. The macrium pebuild usually includes a folder of your machine specific drivers in a folder called Drivers with sub folders Disk, Ethernet and USB in boot.wim. It annoyingly attempts to load them at program start up.

hsehestedt · Jun 2, 2023

I should start off by saying that I am a huge fan of Macrium Reflect - I have 8 purchased licenses (2 of the 4 packs).

However, there a couple things annoying me just a little bit right now.

First, now that I have patched my Windows PE installation on my computer to address the black lotus vulnerabilities, Reflect will no longer recognize my Windows PE install. So, when I try to create a new boot disk, it insists on downloading WinPE from Microsoft even though it is already installed on my system. Naturally, because the version of Win PE that it downloads is not patched, media built with that version will not boot on my machine without disabling Secure Boot.

Second, cereberus pointed out today that boot media may be specific to a particular system if any special drivers are needed. I know that this is nit-picking, but I really like the way that Veritas System Recovery (formerly Norton Ghost) handles this. After you create boot media, you can take that boot media to another system and ADD the drivers for that system to it. There is no need to create new media. You can simply update your existing media. That seems like a pretty intelligent way of handling it.

But, don't get me wrong - the Veritas software has some major failings as well. I still prefer Reflect.

SIW2 · Jun 2, 2023

the Drivers folder is on the root of the media

and also in boot.wim

It added those in spite of telling me that all necessary drivers are already in the wim file before it ran the pebuild.

I haven't tested this, but it is likely you could just delete those folders and it wouldn't have anything to annoyingly load.

SIW2 · Jun 2, 2023

Reflect will no longer recognize my Windows PE install...it insists on downloading WinPE from Microsoft even though it is already installed on my system.

Can't you select it as your custom wim ?

take that boot media to another system and ADD the drivers for that system to it.

I havent tested this, but possibly you could just copy in the relevant inf cat and sys files into the appropriate macrium Drivers sub folder.

I dont know if they would need to be copied just to the Drivers folder on the media root (easier) , or if they need to be in the boot.wim Drivers folder.

hsehestedt · Jun 2, 2023

SIW2 said:
Can't you select it as your custom wim ?

I havent tested this, but possibly you could just copy in the relevant inf cat and sys files into the appropriate macrium Drivers sub folder.

I dont know if they would need to be copied just to the Drivers folder on the media root (easier) , or if they need to be in the boot.wim Drivers folder.

View attachment 61532

I didn't really spend much time with this, but I try to point it to that WIM and it didn't like it.

SIW2 · Jun 2, 2023

That is odd it has always picked up any wim I select.

or use the volume guid or device path instead of a letter.
E:\Recovery\WindowsRe\Somename.wim
\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolume5\Recovery\WindowsRe\Somename.wim
\\?\Volume{6e277fa6-aa82-4939-b7e4-1cb049271596}\Recovery\WindowsRe\Somename.wim

hsehestedt · Jun 3, 2023

SIW2 said:
That is odd it has always picked up any wim I select.

View attachment 61547

or use the volume guid or device path instead of a letter.
E:\Recovery\WindowsRe\Somename.wim
\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolume5\Recovery\WindowsRe\Somename.wim
\\?\Volume{6e277fa6-aa82-4939-b7e4-1cb049271596}\Recovery\WindowsRe\Somename.wim

Ah, yes - you bring up a good point, but it is not as it appears!

Let me step you through what I see.

Select the option to create rescue media.
Click on "Advanced".
The first tab is "Choose Base WIM". Select "Windows RE".
Go to the "Options" tab and then select "Custom base WIM". In my case, I then point it to my Win PE based WIM.

When you build the media you will note a message saying that it is adding WiFi support. This tells me that it is clearly ignoring my WIM and building a Win RE (not PE) based media since Win PE does not support WiFi. Only Win RE supports WiFi.

Now, repeat the above steps, but rather than selecting Windows RE on the "Choose Base WIM" tab, select Windows PE. This time, when I try to build the media it wants to download Windows PE! Again, it is ignoring my custom WIM.

The bottom line is that it seems to be completely ignoring the custom WIM file that I have specified.

EDIT: Note that it will only ask to download WinPE from Microsoft if it has not already done so. Delete the folder where it builds the media and you will see the behavior I described above.

SIW2 · Jun 3, 2023

This tells me that it is clearly ignoring my WIM

Cant tell from that. The option probably appears because of what you selected on the previous page.

If you continue you will probably find that it does use your selected wim file. It is easy to see by adding a folder or a text file with some memorable name to the root of your wim image. Then look inside the macrium boot.wim after it has been created and see if your folder/text file is there. Or just query the completed macrium boot.wim wim file with dism.

running it from within win7, I pointed it at
win7 winre.wim
win7 boot.wim (it mounts and adjusts only the first image the second image is still in the completed macrium boot.wim )
win10 boot.wim (it mounts and adjusts only the first image the second image is still in the completed macrium boot.wim )
win11 winre.wim
and a couple of my home made winpes.

works every time in the sense that it adds the relevant files to image 1. But if pointed at a wim that contains several images, it ignores the other images which remain as they were.

jro11 · Nov 26, 2023

Bree said:
Some of us are gluttons for punishment

WOW Bree has 9 laptops!! Some day, IF I'm sent to heaven (only if dogs are sent there too - W. Rogers) I'll have to ask Bree why he has 9 laptops!

I'm currently (while waiting for Macrium to send me product) reviewing the Macrium-sponsored YouTubes...

Currently on "Cloning a disk using Macrium Reflect 8" where at the end 'she' says "Please note that at this time (no date indicated) windows cannot be booted from USB hard drives..." I seem to recall I've done so. Is this (Macrium statement) true?

Fabler2 · Nov 26, 2023

jro11 said:
WOW Bree has 9 laptops!! Some day, IF I'm sent to heaven (only if dogs are sent there too - W. Rogers) I'll have to ask Bree why he has 9 laptops!

I'm currently (while waiting for Macrium to send me product) reviewing the Macrium-sponsored YouTubes...

Currently on "Cloning a disk using Macrium Reflect 8" where at the end 'she' says "Please note that at this time (no date indicated) windows cannot be booted from USB hard drives..." I seem to recall I've done so. Is this (Macrium statement) true?

Yes and no. The version of Windows on a USB drive is Windows to Go. Not supported by Microsoft but creatable via Rufus and other software I believe.

Using Rufus To Create Windows To Go USB Drive

A complete guide to use the Rufus tool to create a Windows To Go USB drive running Windows 10 or the latest Windows 11.

www.intowindows.com

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