Macrium Free Restore Question

I am in process of installing Macrium Free on a relative's HP DM4 laaptop running Windows 7 Home Premium x64. My question is, when restore the system drive, is there any need to run any repair procedure on Windows 7 or will all be ready to boot back into Windows? Not familiar with Macrium but thought it would be a good option in this case. Thanks for your help.

Gary

 

Hi Gary

I always verify the image prior to reinstatement (Other Tasks > Verify) - if all's well with the image, there won't be any need to run any repair and the machine should boot fine.

philby

 

Thanks and it worked great - imaged and restored fine. I guess in free version you can only restore from recovery CD. Is this true ofr paid version as well or can you backup from CD also and thanks.

Gary

 

Hi Gary,

The paid version has WinPE v2.1 (Vista) included in it. Only one download per license and future updates are by patch. You can do both, install it on your PC and create Recovery Media (CD/USB). If you install it on the PC then at boot time you get a menu allowing you to boot into Windows 7 (x32/x64) or into the Recovery Media of Mercium Reflect.

I bought from their site a family pack of four licenses for $80. For another $20, I bought four licenses for Redeploy and so forth. I have so far used one license to download the WinPE v2.1 x64 and one license for WinPE v2.1 x32, and two are still remaining. However, if you boot from Recovery Media (CD/USB), then it doesn't matter if the WinPE is x32 version or 64 version. Only when you want to install it in your Windows, you to have it available at boot time, then you need the correct version.

Best regards,

KOR!

P.S. The Recovery CD in their free version is Linux. For WinPE v2.1 (Vista) and WinPE v3.0 (Windows 7), they have to pay license fee to Microsoft. For this reason you are allowed one download per license and also for this reason it is not included in the free version.

 

This is somewhat true (it was true with winPE 2.0). With WinPE 2.1 and later they would have to pay a license fee, if the software is used on windows xp and earlier.
If a user has windows vista, server 2008(/sp2) or windows 7 he is already covered/licensed to use WinPE.

The companies do not provide WinPE in their free versions for making users to upgrade to the paid versions, but has nothing to do with paying a license fee to microsoft.

Panagiotis

 

Dear Panagiotis,

You, being an expert what you have written is very true. I have purchased the licenses very recently. When I tried to download the WinPE for the x32, I couldn't as it said that I have already have downloaded once and my license allows me only one download. So, I wrote to their excellent support and I was told to change the license key and then download the WinPE for the x32. I did this and this allowed me to download the second WinPE.

Though, my desktop has now crashed as I deleted the 100MB SRP. I worked OK for a day and now I cannot start the computer as it is giving me I/O error. The hard disk has three partitions, C, D and E. So, I loaded the WinPE recovery disk, but every time I try to explore the image or recover the image on either the E partition or USB external disk, it crashes. And, I am not able to restore the image.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

Hope you can get your problems sorted out. But, still my simple question was, can you make an image from the WINPE paid recovery CD or are you limited to just being able to restore images and thanks.

Gary

 

Hi Gary,

You can make an image in three ways:

1. Inside the Windows
2. Booting into the Recovery Console on boot-up, without the Recovery CD.
3. From the Recovery CD.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

When do you get the I/O error?Try to run a checkdisk (chkdsk /f) to the partition(s) where the image resides.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491051.aspx

If it still gives you I/O errors it means that the image is corrupted.

Panagiotis

 

Dear Panagiotis,

It wouldn't boot so couldn't use chkdsk. Tried to restore image from CD Recovery of Marcium Reflect, but it kept on crashes.

Used ShadowProtect to restore it as the image from their Recovery CD, which was three days old. Got back my 100mb, lol.

Pretty impressed with it. Don't know why it is sooooo expense. Would be nice if they give three or four computers licenses for home for $100.

Many thanks and I will be coming back to you and the other gurus on EasyBCD or BootIce.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

Kor, perform a checkdisk from inside your windows on your partitions and try again to load/explore this image.

If it gives you I/O errors again you should report it to macrium.

Panagiotis

 

I have one question about Macrium also. If I make an image from within win7, then right after that can I restore that C drive image to an external drive from within Win7 also, without using the recovery disk? I guess I'm saying I want to use Macrium to clone my C drive to an external disk.