Paragon - WinPE 2.1 vs WinPE 3.1 ?

1. What are the differences between the Paragon - WinPE 2.1 provided with "DB 10 Pro" vesres the WinPE 3.0 provided with "B&R 10 Home" ?

2. Will the Paragon - WinPE 3.0 work to boot a Win XP Pro PC ?

 

2. Dunno since i never tried.

1.1. WinPE 2.1 is based on Vista SP1 source, 3.0 on W7 RTM source

1.2 DB 10 Pro does not exist, you mean DB 9 Pro? DB 9 Pro has less features than B&R 10 Home and no official W7 support, see comparison @ http://www.paragon-software.com/home/brs/comparison.html

 

Actually DB 10 Pro did exist but is not for sale any longer. It was replaced with B&R 10 Home.

WinPE 3.1 has more driver support

 

biscuits,

So, does WinPE 3.0 work in terms of booting a Win XP pc, in order to perform a B&R 10 Home - Restore an Archive operation ?

.... Just double checking, before actually upgrading from DB10 Pro (with WinPe 2.1) to B&R Home 10 (with WinPe 3.0)

 

Yes, it will run on XP. Actually, the OS installed doesn't really matter when it comes to booting up with the WinPE disks. The disks are like the OS themselves. And may I add that with both WinPE disks, you don't have to have DB10 pro or B&R 10 home installed for it to work.

Bear in mind though that uninstalling DB10 Pro will not uninstall the Back-Up Recovery Console written on your PC's MBR. (Assuming that you enabled it to boot).

P.S.
I tried and successfully restored my system partition using the WinPE 3.0 disk. The scenario is my OS (Win XP) can't be detected and my corrupted system partition is seen as not formatted so FIXMBR and FIXBOOT won't work.

 

biscuits,

Are you referring to Enabling Boot up Recovery Access to the Backup Capsule ? ... I never created a Backup Capsule, so I do not think I have anything to be concerned about with this item.

Thanks for info confirming that winpe 3.0 will work.

 

The main difference in the WinPE version 2.1 and 3.0 are the hardware support.

Because the two environments run slightly different kernels, they use different drivers. This technically shouldn't cause any issues, assuming there are such drivers available. That however can be a rather risky assumption to make, some older hardware will NOT have drivers available for one or both of these environments. For example, say you have an old laptop that was made for XP, chances are the hardware doesn't have the resources for Vista or Windows 7, and so the manufacture does not make drivers for these kernels. In this case, you would need to make a BartPE disk with our software included, see thread: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=257771

If you would like to test and see if the WinPE 2.1 or 3.0 will work for you or not, I suggest downloading a recovery CD from www.neosmart.net for Windows Vista or Windows 7, if that disk boots your system, then ours is more than likely to boot as well.

 

Its not easy to find the disks you referred to on Neosmart website: here they are. What about booting your Recovery CD inside a VMWare virtual machine? It can't access the PC, doesn't offer to enter network password, and doesn't see USB flash drives. How would you comment on that? It sounds quite surprising, given notable trend to virtualization in Paragon packages.

On a positive note (still needs to be answered), can you provide links where forum members can download the following Paragon Manuals:

- Creating WinPE 3.0 Bootable Images;
- Customizing WinPE 3.0 Bootable Images.

Why these WinPE specific Manuals are not included in package downloads, despite each package Manuals mention WinPE? Or I missed them somehow? Generic WinPE generated by Paragon packages just doesn't work properly inside virtual machines, offering no access to local drives.

 

About the WinPE 3.x rescue media that came with my B&R 10 Home, I have found no way yet to launch a simple chkdsk from a cmd window under the boot environment. Is this possible ? Thanks !

 

As far as I know. there is no way to start Windows Command prompt from Paragon WinPE because of MS limitation.
If you need to run CHKDSK from CD, use Windows 7 Repair CD or Windows Instalaltion CD.
Note: Windows 7 Repair CD could be loaded here: http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

 

biscuits, Paragon_Matt, Mech_An,

FYI, ... Just to get back to you guys, ...Both WinPE 2.1 and WinPE 3.0, successfully booted my Win XP pc and both can access my c: drive and the archives stored on my external usb drive.


Last Concern

I notice that when I Boot from either the WinPE 2.1 or WinPE 3.0 CD that on the Disk View Tab where it shows the bar maps of your hard drives, my External USB Hard Drive is listed with the Heading of:

Basic Hard Disk 1 (Unknown Model)
Drobo Drive (E: )
2047.9GB NTFS

However, when booted normally into indows XP and I access B&R 10 Home from the windows xp start menu, the Disk View Tab where it shows the bar maps of your hard drives, my External USB Hard Drive is listed with the expected Heading of:

Basic Hard Disk 1 (Drobo Drobo3 USB Device)
Drobo Drive (E: )
2047.9GB NTFS


Questions:

1) So, is this an indication of a real problem to worry about or is this just a minor cosmetic issue ?
2) Why would it show as "Unknown Model" only when Booted from a WinPE 2.1 or WinPE 3.0 CD ?

NOTE: When booted from the WinPE cd's I went into the Restore wizard an the archives on my external usb hard drive show up and the archives can be selected for restore. I went all the way up to the last restore dialog and then cancelled out before committing to doing an actual restore. It appears that all archives can be accessed from my external usb hard drive. .... Also, Volume Explorer can see all the files stored on my External USB Hard Drive.

.... I am just wondering why (and whether or not I should worry that) the WinPE booted enviroment lists "unknown model" for my external drive, but correctly lists its volume name, correctly lists its allocation gb and correctly states its an NTFS volume.

 

JosephB

I suppose, WinPE environment has limited list of known HDD models, unlike full Windows. I don't think that model details are taking from B&R engine.

 

Mech_An

Actually, I made a mistake in my testing/observations. When booted from the WinPE 2.1 CD, it also correctly shows the (Model Name) for my external usb hard drive. It is only when booting from a WinPE 3.0 CD that "(Unknown Model)" is displayed for my external usb hard drive.

.... So, why is WinPE 3.0 boot cd acting differently than WinPE 2.1 boot cd ?

 

Sir,

For more info on winPE 2.1 and 3 see this ,it has great info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinPE


raama---krushna--from india