Macrium Reflect

Is this before the actual Reflect splash screen appears? If so, I've noticed that certain builds of Windows 10 (and therefore their corresponding WinPE 10 builds) exhibit strange video behavior on certain systems, even though other versions (including pre-10 versions) work fine. Did you perhaps change your WinPE version? Or if this is the first Rescue Media you've built with Reflect 7.2 and you've been building with WinPE 10, pre-7.2 versions used 10 1607, whereas 7.2 uses 10 1709.

 

@jphughan ,

I think so but I'm not even sure what the 'splash screen' is supposed to be. I think I've seen something like that for the first time after getting certain Windows updates, possibly years ago.
This is a Windows 7 system, pro 64 bit.

As for the rescue dvd, made with the latest version of Macrium Reflect free and the latest build. I know very little about WinPE and used the defaults as much as possible I think.

 

The splash screen in the case of Rescue Media is the rectangular banner that says Macrium Reflect, and the little loading animation under it. Are you seeing these graphics anomalies before that appears? If you've kept to the defaults and are using Windows 7 on your host OS, then you might be building using WinPE 3.1. You may want to consider changing that. Even if it works fine for your current PC, WinPE 3.1 lacks native support for several technologies found on newer PCs, such as USB 3.0, NVMe, and UEFI booting. That could put you into a jam if you ever had to unexpectedly use your Rescue Media on a newer PC, e.g. after a sudden failure of your current one necessitated purchasing a new one and you wanted to restore your image onto it. I'd recommend testing a WinPE 10-based build of your Rescue Media. Assuming you're on Reflect 7.2.xxxx, open Rescue Media Builder, click Advanced, go to the "Choose Base WIM" tab, and select WinPE 10. When you build it, you'll probably be prompted to download a package from Microsoft, so let that occur. Then test boot your current PC with that new Rescue Media. If your current PC works with it, I'd stick to that -- and maybe it will solve your graphics issue. If it doesn't work, then you can always switch back to WinPE 3.1.

 

@jphughan ,

'Are you seeing these graphics anomalies before that appears?' Honestly, I don't remember. I'd have to restore an image to find out.That's something I rarely do.
WinPE ... it didn't use that , did it ? Did version 6 use Linux ? I know certain things seemed strange when I switched to version 6. I have updated the 'build' of the rescue dvd.

I can't restore one of my images on a new computer anyway, can I ? I have the free version, and it was my impression that feature was reserved for the commercial version.

WInPE 10 for an older Windows 7 system ? Does that work and is it safe ?

 

Based on your description, the graphics anomaly occurred just loading the Rescue environment. You don't have to restore an image to see that; you just need to boot your system from Rescue Media.

At one point Reflect could build Rescue Media from either WinPE or Linux, but Linux support was dropped at some point. I can't remember when.

The Free version does not include Macrium ReDeploy, so that's correct that you likely wouldn't be able to restore an image from one PC onto another one.

For WinPE 10 on Windows 7, that's completely fine and fully supported. The WinPE version is a "platform" used only by the Rescue environment, which is completely independent of anything installed on your PC and therefore has absolutely no dependency on it -- except that Windows 7 needs to be able to build WIM files based on WinPE 10 in order to create the Rescue Media itself, but as of this writing, Windows 7 can work with all available versions of WinPE. One of the benefits of using the WinPE version that shares the same kernel as your OS is that it allows the Rescue Media wizard to extract any necessary drivers directly from your host OS for integration into the Rescue Media, whereas if you used a different WinPE kernel, you might have to supply them manually. However, newer WinPE versions often have broader hardware support in the first place, so in some cases WinPE 10 won't need any additional drivers even if WinPE 3.1 would have. But to your earlier point, if you never plan to use this Rescue Media with a different PC, then the scenario I mentioned above wouldn't apply, so if WinPE 3.1 is working for you, then there's no real benefit to changing anything.

 

FWIW... I've seen the so called "rainbow effect" many times when BOOTing my computer. It all happens before the execution of the WinPE load/Reflect load and it doesn't affect the end result at all. It's most likely a result of the graphics System coming alive and a timing issue.

I've always ignored it... it's never affected anything and it happens at random loading all kinds of images at BOOT (Linux ISOs, WinPE in many forms, actual OS loads <Linux and Windows>, etc.)

This particular machine is a 4th gen i7 running on an H81 chipset-based HP mainboard. The Graphics System is the i7 on-chip sub-System.

 

Does anybody have a good explanation for why creating a 12 GB differential image of a Windows partition takes almost 15 minutes, while making a full 46 GB image of that same partition is done in less than 10 minutes?

Macrium says because my hardware is broken...

(that PC is about a year old and working fine according to me)

 

Is the "Looking for changes" step taking a very long time for the Diff? If you're using CBT that step wouldn't occur at all, but that's the only significant difference I can think of between the process of capturing a Diff compared to a Full. But after Reflect has determined what blocks need to be captured for the Diff, I can't immediately think of why the actual transfer of those blocks would take longer in the context of a Diff compared to a Full.

 

No; checking for differences took something like a minute (today).

Once differences were determined it took Reflect more than an hour to write a 1 GB incremental image... (from internal SATA to internal SATA!)

Macrium states the machine is broken and that they can do nothing for me (except a refund). I find this hard to believe as the PC works fine, with every other piece of software I have used on it. I'm really hoping someone here has the magic tip for me...

 

IIRC MR v6 used to have an option 'Fix boot problems', or was I dreaming (again)? I don't see this in V7 ... ?

 

It's in both, but it's always only been available in the Rescue Media environment. All editions of Reflect have it though, including Free.

 

Ah, OK!

 

I've been on V6 for ages even though I bought v7 way back.
I installed v7 and tried to delete a test image, but Macrium Image Guardian won't let me .

How do I do it?
Or should I say, what's the correct way to do it?

 

Easiest way would be disable Image Guardian temporarily ~ Open Reflect & select Other Tasks > Macrium Image Guardian Settings > Turn off Image Guardian (& for how long in dropdown More Options menu). Delete unwanted image.

 

Even with MIG functional, you should be able to delete snapshots through the RESTORE TAB of Reflect via snapshot selection and the "Other Actions..." LINK... that's always the safest way to delete snapshots (with Reflect showing you what other snapshots will be affected by the deletion).

 

I'll have a look, guys.
Thanks.

Edit: I know I am going to get some criticism for this, but I turned Image Guardian off completely.
I don't know why, but throughout the decades, I have never been one to get malware, or in particular, ransomeware.

 

You won't get criticism from me, as I turned it off also

 

Not never, but so far. Why disable protection if it works and does not require anything for it? When you catch a WannaCry, it will be late. From the MR interface, image files are deleted with MIG enabled.

 

If you’re not going to use it at all, you may as well uninstall it rather than just disable it, but I’m more with aldist on this one. I do NOT run third-party AV because it comes with too many drawbacks (especially these days), and I'm not prone to malware/ransomware either, AND I periodically clone my backup disk to another disk that I keep offline except when it's being updated -- but with MIG I still don't see a downside to using it. It has a very focused purpose and it doesn't seem to be creating any side effects on my system, so I figure it's better to have protection enabled proactively rather than wait until you've already been screwed once by malware/ransomware. If MIG were a separate paid add-on, I might not buy it since I've already got that offline clone disk, but it's included with a product I already own.

On the other hand, I've got CBT disabled because in that case I decided that the upsides were slim to non-existent for my use case, and therefore I decided to err on the side of keeping things simpler rather than adding more complexity for a tiny performance boost on my infrequent Diff and Inc backups. That philosophy has served me quite well over the years, since I've seen too many performance-enhancing tools cause more headaches than they solved, especially when they create problems that don't obviously implicate the tool. (As an example, earlier versions of the Samsung NVMe driver triggered a BSoD when the user created a VHDX file. If I'd installed that driver and encountered that problem when creating Hyper-V VMs, possibly not until a while later, I would have lost a LOT of time and hair before it occurred to me that my third-party NVMe driver might be responsible for that issue.)

 

Question: On my Windows 10 Pro machine I do not have the normal (blue) Macrium Reflect Boot Menu GUI, but the native (black) Windows Boot Menu, with the same options to boot to Windows 10 or Macrium Reflect System Recovery. This is so, even if I try and recreate it first using 'No boot menu' option, and recreating.

I have no problem with it as is, especially as native Windows Boot Menu also has F8 option to boot to Safe Mode, but anyone else experienced this?

 

I believe the black interface is used on systems that boot in Legacy BIOS mode and blue is for UEFI systems. The blue menu has nothing to do with Reflect, though. It’s just Windows Boot Manager, but you generally won’t ever see it unless you have multiple boot options. But yes, F8 is gone for UEFI. Interesting article about it here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/05/22/designing-for-pcs-that-boot-faster-than-ever-before/

 

Hmm ... I am pretty sure this Intel Core i7 4510U laptop is UEFI though, and it used to have the familiar Reflect menu? Maybe something got changed but not sure exactly where to check.

Edit: Indeed, in 'System Information', BIOS Mode is UEFI.

 

It does not depend on MR or operating system version. Command Prompt from admin (Win7, 8.1, 10 v1809):
Black boot menu and F8: bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy
Blue boot menu and F8: bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes
Like this

There are other variants of these commands.

 

Cool!

 

Thanks @aldist, nervous of fiddling with such things (bcedit) but will give that a go (after taking an image ). I presume it would work for 10 v1803 also ...