Issue with Bootable Media

Hi Everybody,

I'm still stumped using Paragon Back Up and Recovery 17CE.

Sometime in the future, I may have to restore an HDD if I need to return the Lenovo desktop computer for repair (and would erase the HDD first) or an inevitable HDD crash or serious virus/malware infection. I would need an external BOOT device that has the Paragon software already installed in order to restore.

Happily, I'm using Windows 10 Home 64-bit ... build: 19042.804 ... version: 20H2, and apparently don't need the ADK stuff. I can use Paragon to build the BOOT device on a 62GB USB device. That works for me.

Paragon has an issue though, and tells me:
Operation failed. Error code =27, error message = Cannot mount WIM Image
​

How can I work around this. (The computer manufacturer tells me it's easy! Just send us $50 USD and we'll send "YOU" a USB device that will boot your computer into a recovery mode) I don't want to recover the computer back to the original factory settings, I'm going to want to run the Paragon software to recover.

Any help will be received with glee.

Thank you,

Paul

 

Paul- The cause of the issue that you are having can be diverse (could be a Paragon issue, a WIM issue, or a God Knows What issue) and are obviously not acceptable. The easiest (and best) way to accomplish what you want to do (having a reliable restore procedure) would be simply this:

1). Download and install the excellent Macrium Reflect free
2). make a bootable resucue media (either on a CD or your USB)
3). create a system image using Macrium
4). boot your system using the recovery media you created
5). when in the recovery media see if you can browse the recovery image that you created.
6). if you can, ditch Paragon.

Please let us know if this helped in any way!

m

 

Maybe this will help in some way? This is from Paragon:
https://kb.paragon-software.com/article/102 For your error code: 27

It states:

 

jPaulB,
Just like you, I’m running Windows 10 Home 64 bit version 20H2 build 19042.804 so I thought I’d repeat the process of creating Paragon 17 CE’s revovery environment to make sure you’re trying to do it the same way as it works perfectly for me.

But first, the obvious question to ask is why, unless it’s a typing mistake, are you using a 62GB USB drive? Any USB flash drive with a capacity of 500MB or more will be plenty. I agree it’s not easy to find USB flash drives of 500MB or even 1 or 2GB any more but 62GB is way too big for this job.

Down to the job in hand.

To build a recovery USB flash drive using your installed copy of Paragon 17 CE (my installed Paragon 17 CE is version 17.9.3):

1. Insert a FAT32 formatted USB Flash Drive with a capacity of 500MB or more.
2. In Paragon 17 CE select Settings & Tools, Recovery Media Builder.
3. Change the Creation Mode from the default "Use ADK" to "Use this Windows image (ADK is not required)".
   Click Next.
4. Paragon will ask you to "Choose a flash drive".
5. Select the one you wish to use and click Next.
6. Paragon will ask you to confirm you want to write the recovery environment to the flash drive.
   Click Yes to confirm.
7. Click Next if you don't want to access any network locations from the recovery environment. Otherwise change the dropdown from the default "Do not mount a network share" to one of the two "Mount a network share" options and then click Next.
8. Paragon will then create the recovery environment and write it to the flash drive which will be formatted as part of the process. This took approximately 5 minutes using an Integral 8GB USB 2.0 USB flash drive on my PC.

Finally, you should confirm your PC can boot the recovery environment and restore a backup successfully. Until you've done this you won't know if your backups are going to be viable or not. I usually try to restore the backup to a new freshly formatted drive instead ot the original just in case the restore is not successful. If I’m not able to use an alternative drive and have to use the original drive for the restore then I will make backups using a variety of programs eg. Paragon, Acronis, Macrium, Redo Rescue 3. The chance of none of them working correctly is very slim and not something I’ve ever seen.

JB

 

Thank you, JB. My problem was more that the Paragon create process failed because it couldn't mount an "WIM-Image. I think the manufacture of the computer may have deliberately disabled that feature in the versions of Windows they provide. I think, because they would be happy to send me a pre-made USB-Drive that I could use to Boot from the USB-Drive. For $50.00
Happened with a couple of other applications that I tried. Finally found one with the Macrium Reflect product.

Again, thanks for taking the time to respond. I appreciate you doing that.

Regards,

Paul

 

All the way back in 2018 I clean installed Windows 10 on my PC which has resulted in there being two winre.wim files on my PC. Strangely they aren't the same size. The one at C:\Recovery\uniquensequenceof characterstothisPC\winre.wim is 257MB while the other at C:\boot\winpe_10_64\winre.wim is 399MB. My guess going by the Paragon advice above is that the recovery media builder uses the first one of these two and in your case the builder of your PC chose not to include one or both of these files on your PC.

JB