OK, I see the update notifications in the taskbar now (3 machines). How do you get rid of that, a reboot? Sure, I agree RBF, different issue to what you have been primarily warning against ... . Just in the habit of updating as available, even if it isn't really necessary ... this is MR sloppiness. Testing 'unoffishul' builds is another ballgame - risky, foolhardiness on the part of the user.
Not at all, although I agree with you on your statement concerning customers losing faith over official release/retraction of v4433. The whole previous part of this thread has dealt with unreleased software only (even v4433 was that when it appeared in the wild a few days ago). And nobody is "blaming" users for anything... we're just trying to document prudent cautions as they relate to unreleased & released software. The official release of v4433 is fully on Macrium (bad, bad Macrium )...
---Looks like Majorgeeks is still hosting this on their page with today's updates. I hope not too many people get it and have issues.
I'd like to stress the fact that v4433 was offered by MR, I didn't hit any link directing to the update. Seen the kind of reaction to this update in this forum I decided to go back to v 4325 as a precaution, it took 1 minute to restore the old version and the whole operation was automated and flawless.
I am frustrated that I just discovered a PC with a broken Reflect activation. After taking the time to look up the code and trying to apply it I was greeted with a message that it could not do so as the machine had a pending reboot. I've never had 3rd party software require a reboot to enter activation information. This person is in the middle of a workday and a restart is not practical at the moment. This is turning into an ongoing situation of unfortunate events. We have licenses for 3 servers and 16 workstations. It will be difficult to justify an upgrade to the boss when the next version comes around. I need this to be the most reliable thing I have on these PCs. Not one of the least.
Reflect installations falling out of activation was reported during the Windows Insider builds that eventually became Windows 10 1903, and it seems users who upgrade to that final version still encounter this. I'm not sure what's going on and don't recall Macrium going into any detail about underlying cause or plans/feasibility of fixing it. But I suspect the reason the reboot is required is because when paid Reflect installations fall out of activation, they work as Reflect Free systems rather than reverting to trial mode. The problem is that the free versions don't have CBT or MIG. A paid installation includes both by default (assuming Reflect is installed on an OS that supports those features), and both of those components require a restart in order to start being used.
After Macrium has a update/patch, should you make a new rescue/boot disk to recover images made after the update/patch?
The Release Notes usually mention whether you should create new rescue media. It does no harm doing so anyway.
Updated here to 7.2.4440 and it looks good so far, although even the last update 7.2.4433 was flawless on my machine despite the fact it was subsequently pulled...
This isn't generally required because many releases do NOT have changes that pertain to Rescue, and in fact Macrium has been very good at maintaining compatibility so that even some old V6 Rescue Media can typically work with backups created by V7. That said, there are sometimes releases that do include changes to the Rescue environment, including this new 7.2.4440 release if you check the release notes. Or if you don't check the release notes, I'd recommend creating new Rescue Media every now and then just to be safe. However, it would also be a good idea to store an ISO build of known good Rescue Media from an earlier build in case the new build you install turns out to have problems that affect Rescue. Macrium has had some releases that introduced problems in Rescue, including one case I remember where the release generated Rescue Media that crashed immediately on startup. They had an updated Reflect release out within 2 hours of that being reported on the forum.
The boot menu environment boots from the Rescue Media file set that Reflect caches on your system. The boot menu is actually a good way to test the Rescue environment created by a new release. If everything looks good, you can proceed to updating your Rescue Media flash drive, burning a new CD/DVD, or whatever. If things are broken, at least you still have your "external" Rescue Media from a previous build. Although building ISOs as I suggested above is a nice option because it allows you to hang onto an arbitrary number of previous builds without having to keep a bunch of flash drives or optical discs lying around. Just make sure you know how to create a bootable flash drive or burn a disc from an ISO file, and store the ISO(s) somewhere other than your PC -- perhaps at the location you're storing your backups.
This is completely optional, you can not create a new boot disk. If integration into the boot menu is enabled and you are using Shadow Defender, then you need to recreate (reintegrate) WinPE, otherwise it will take 3 minutes to exit the protected mode Shadow Defender instead of 3 seconds.
RE Build (Boot Menu & Rescue Media) both cause BSOD (Stopcode/Kernal Security Check Failure) on my PC unlike Build 4325. PE Build works fine.
WinRE is the default if it's available on the user's system because a) it doesn't require a large download from Microsoft, b) the Recovery environment kernel will always match the main Windows kernel, and c) for some reason it's the only option that allows Wi-Fi support to be added to Rescue Media (requires the host system to be running Win10). The problem is that everyone's WinRE environment will be different. For example, when I mounted the WIM stored on my own system's Recovery partition, which is the basis for WinRE builds, I saw drivers for my system's Synaptics touchpad, which hugely bloated the WinRE build because those drivers include video animations to demonstrate various touchpad gestures. But evidently, somehow installing the Synaptics driver on my main system caused those drivers to be copied into my WinRE environment, and therefore into WinRE Rescue Media builds. The point is that WinRE has its advantages, but the fact that it gets customized even before Reflect touches it can lead to problems like this that may not always be widespread. Additionally, the fact that WinRE always updates when you update Windows 10 can itself become a liability, because if a bug exists in the new WinRE kernel from Microsoft, then your Rescue Media builds might be affected going forward. For example, the initial release of WinRE 10 1809 had an issue that prevented Reflect from loading drivers during startup, even though the drivers could be manually loaded after Rescue had launched. That was fixed when Microsoft re-released Win10 1809. By comparison, Reflect 7.2's WinPE 10 build option always uses WinPE 10 1709 (currently, though earlier Reflect versions use earlier WinPE 10 versions), and that WIM does NOT get customized for each user's system before Reflect builds Rescue Media on it, so that option gives you a consistent "foundation" regardless of your system setup or what version of Windows 10 you're running. The catches are that you have to let Reflect download and store the necessary Win10 1809 ADK files from Microsoft on your system and you can't use Wi-Fi in Rescue. But if you're ok with that, then it's an option worth considering. It's also worth pointing out that you can switch back and forth at will. Reflect will simply cache multiple Rescue Media file sets, and at any given time you can choose to create Rescue Media built from WinPE/RE version or the other.
When I click "Restore", I can't see anything now. Before the update, I could see all my backup files on my (external) drives. They are still there, of course, but I don't get a list in MR showing the different backup files under "Image Restore" and "File and Folder Restore". Is it just me? I'm new to MR and don't know much about the program. Sorry for the noob question.
Click the "Folders to search" link under either the Image or F&F tab (Reflect maintains separate lists for each). Are the expected paths there? If so, have you confirmed that you can actually browse to the folder containing your backups in Rescue? To do that, open PE Explorer by clicking the computer icon in the taskbar to open a rudimentary file browser. Make sure your external hard drive is detected and has the same drive letter it normally does. If the drive letter is different, then you'll need to add a new path in your "Folders to search" list for the new drive letter. Macrium takes steps to try to deliver drive letter consistency between Windows and Rescue (which normally have no relation to each other), but that doesn't always work. If you can't see your external drive at all, then it could be the result of the USB driver copy behavior change in the new release. To address that, you'll need to change your Rescue Media build options. Go to Advanced, click Devices & Drivers, and check the override box at the bottom. In the immediately previous release, that was always enabled in an attempt to fix some USB issues that occurred in prior releases when it was always disabled. But since always enabling it caused problems in other situations that used to work, it's now an option. If you can see your external drive, the "Folders to search" list is correct, and backups still aren't being listed, then this thread was created on the Macrium forum reporting a similar issue, although that user found that WinRE worked as expected and WinPE 10 didn't, so that might be worth trying too I guess. However, that user didn't check some of the things I just suggested here, and since Macrium asked them to open a support ticket, it's unclear whether we'll find out what the problem and fix were.
