It should have been available just under C:\Boot instead of you needing to open up the WIM file, but yes part of the file is incomprehensible when viewed in Notepad. But the time zone is displayed clearly in my file, and based on your edited post above, it seems that's the case for you too. Is that time zone correct for you? What time zone do you see in your full Windows environment? And do you have "Automatically switch for Daylight Saving" enabled in your full Windows environment? I ask because it seems that Moscow Standard Time has changed its DST rules a few times in the last few years, so that may be a factor here as well.
You're right ... but it's not good if the new backup file has the wrong time or date when you move to a different time zone. I usually always focus on the date the file was created. Some people are very conservative and have been using the same ISO version of Macrium for many years. Reinstalling an old program is difficult and sometimes impossible. I think a small patch would be useful to change the timezone inside the Macrium ISO image. It would be nice to have this opportunity ... at least sometimes.
This isn't a Macrium issue. It's a Windows PE issue. And using the same ISO for Reflect for many years isn't a good idea because Reflect gets many fixes and improvements over the years. Most of them don't apply to the Rescue environment, but some of them do, and those can be important. Reinstalling Reflect is not difficult at all. The only scenario I can think of where people might want to use an old ISO for years and would find it difficult to reinstall the application to update their Rescue Media would be if they're using a pirated version.
Too much pessimism. ... I came up with an easy way to solve this problem. If you change the time zone frequently, take multiple ISO images by changing the time zone in the Date and Time settings. Burn ISO images to flash or DVD. On one flash, write "Macrium New York", on the second, "Macrium Paris". No problems.
Between talking about using the same ISO for years, claiming it's difficult to reinstall software, and the fact that you seem to use Rescue Media for backups rather than restores pretty regularly, I'm pretty sure my pessimism level is right on the mark. But of course we may never know for sure. Anyhow, changing the time in the BIOS doesn't affect time zones. The BIOS time is just a basic clock. It has no awareness of time zone. So just changing the system time rather than the time zone before building a Rescue Media ISO won't change what happens when you use that ISO unless you keep that incorrect system time while actually using the ISO -- but you already said you didn't want to do that.
v8.0, the boot screen from a USB flash drive was slightly corrected, after the BIOS, the Windows logo now immediately appears, and not a long black screen. Better than v7 anyway.
What one person has created, another person can hack, and that's the way it is. But many users do not want to install the program on the system, fearing to spoil the system or violate the cleanliness of the registry, or think that backup from WinPE is more reliable than backup from Windows
Reflect isn't even running at that point, so differences there would be down to the WinPE/RE version and/or the driver set added to the Rescue Media build. Reflect V8 does not add any support for any new WinPE/RE versions compared to V7. Of course that's how it is. But people have choices as to whether they want to participate in that activity. Sure, there legitimate reasons for not wanting to install applications. That just didn't sound like what was going on to me. And if you don't want applications modifying your registry, then you basically can't use Windows.
Then I’m not sure what to tell you, but the fact remains that Reflect isn’t running at that point, and the only option I know of that might come into play at that stage is the “Legacy EFI compatibility” option, which is designed to address low resolution on some early UEFI systems. That option causes Rescue Media Builder to use the WinPE 5 bootloader even on Rescue Media builds that otherwise use newer releases. Also, weren’t you still using Reflect 7.1 because you objected to the installer size of 7.2? (Not sure how you made your peace with V8 in that case….) Reflect 7.1 only supported WinPE 10 1607. Support for 1709 was added with 7.2 as part of the new Rescue Media Builder interface because 1709 added support for multi-partition flash drives and RMBuilder supported using that capability.
Macrium Reflect 7.3.5854 Released (May 4, 2021) Download Changelog Spoiler: Changes 7.3.5854 Bug fixes and Improvements v7.3.5854 - 4th May 2021 Server Plus - Exchange Mailbox Restore Some types of invalid data in the Exchange database could cause the Mailbox Restore wizard to crash. This has been resolved. Under certain circumstances, if a Mailbox Restore had failed, the Mailbox Restore wizard would sometimes stop responding. This has been resolved. viBoot The password prompt opening a protected image in viBoot could be hidden behind the foreground Window. This has now been resolved. viBoot could have problems mounting images of MBR disks that had previously been initialized as GPT. This has been resolved. Various Various minor fixes and changes to improve Macrium Reflect.
The icon works automatically for me. You have to disconnect and reconnect it after the initial build though since the icon is defined in Autorun.inf, and Windows only processes that when the volume is first mounted.
Wow, in this beta either a bug or a feature was found. We have a backup saved in \dir1\, copy it with the same name to \dir2\, enable global simultaneous display of \ dir1 \ and \ dir2 \. As a result, Macrium only detects one of these two backups. And only by turning off the global display \dir1\ or \dir2\ Macrium will determine the second backup, but not two backups at once. In other words, Macrium does not see two backups with the same ID located in different directories at the same time. The option "do not show MIG notifications in the current session", invoked by clicking on the notification window, would be useful. This will disable the annoying MIG alert, but will not disable the MIG protection. Help -> Configure Update Check ... -> there is a clearly visible graphical bug in the upper left corner. Hopefully beta testers will pass these comments to London
This isn’t new for V8. Macrium has explicitly warned against showing multiple copies of the same backups at the same time in Reflect in the past, since it can cause problems if you tru to delete certain backups, for example. But I suspect if they wanted to get beta feedback from general users, they’d have actually made the beta public rather than expecting such users to use leaked information to obtain V8.
A smart developer always visits popular warez forums to find out how his program is hacked, visits popular technical forums to get user opinions and comments on his program. I've come across this many times. Chinese folk wisdom says
The fact that a developer would be prudent to do something to mitigate a problem like piracy doesn’t excuse the pirates who actually create the problem, and definitely doesn’t mean they should be seen as providing a useful service. Your argument boils down to, "I understand that Macrium wanted to keep this beta closed, but I want to use it, so I'm going to justify doing that by claiming that Macrium should have made it open and would have done that if they were 'a smart developer' in my opinion." Betas are often scaled according to the response capacity of the developers. Macrium is a smaller company, so they’re likely to do better with closed betas involving a smaller group of users who reliably submit clear and precise problem reports, and who have the expertise and willingness to perform testing to determine the problem's reproducibility, the simplest method of triggering it, any other material information, etc. — instead of submitting the much more common type of report that goes, “I was using Reflect today and this weird thing happened. Just thought I’d report it.” Open public betas can generate a lot of that type of reporting, which can then cause a low "signal to noise ratio" that buries the quality reports. If you don't have a huge developer team that can keep up with that volume, that could end up being a worse outcome than missing some quality reports that you might have gotten if you'd run an open beta. But in this case, your problem report about duplicate backups wasn't a V8 beta issue. There will be plenty of time to hear from the general public when V8 is made publicly available.