No more WinPE

Today I received an e-mail from Paragon. First paragraph:

"You own a Paragon product with the WinPE recovery environment. We would like to inform you that Microsoft has changed its license conditions, meaning that we will no longer be allowed to offer you the Paragon WinPE as of March 30, 2012."

 

That is weird - what does the rest of it say?

 

This is the rest:

"If you haven’t downloaded your WinPE from the Paragon website yet, we recommend you to do so by March 30, 2012. To do this, log in at Paragon My Account, download the WinPE and use it to create your boot medium in case of emergency. This is the most convenient way to restart your operating system without reinstallation in the event of system failure.

After March 30th, it will no longer be possible to download the WinPE recovery environment using your account! Customer service/support will not be able to send it retroactively!"

 

Any idea what is going on there?

Doesn't bother me - I make my own.

However, bit of a setback as it is one of the advertised advantages of the paid products.

Just did a quick search - one other reference - here http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/11476

Surprised there isn't a lot more.

 

Bummer!

Just Mickeysoft applying their usual stupidity and intimidation. They've tried something like this on everybody who has found ways to create their own "rescue and recovery" environments going all the way back to Bart's PE Builder (BartPE) for WinXP. For some strange reason they seem to want to force people into using that multi-gigabye WAIK download.

Like SIW2, it doesn't actually affect my own methods either. But what a royal pain for people who need a ready-made solution!

 

I haven't heard anything from other software vendors.

It might be that Paragon don't think it is worth going in for the new licensing terms MS has introduced.

If that is the case, they are going to need much better Linux boot media.

A number of other imaging companies have a function to d/l WAIK for you and pop their program into it - in effect, you are making it yourself on your own machine.

Even the free versions do that now.

 

Actually it's not impossible to get just the WAIK files that are needed without downloading that entire multi-gigabyte package which is almost impossibile for people on slow connections. If anyone is in that situation, there are some "helpful hints" at reboot.pro here.

 

Yes, but it's not very straightforward.

The new waik or wadk or whatever - allows you to d/l the bits you need - well sort of.

Iirc the winpe components are 2.8gb alone.

 

To be accurate : I previously downloaded KB3AIK_EN.iso with 1,789,542,400 bytes from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5753

 

That is windows 7 sp0 - there is a supplement for sp1 - another 1.3gb.

Neither of those are new.

The new one I mentioned is windows 8 - pretty big

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28997

 

Gosh, I may have to relearn everything I forgot about creating my own WinPE disc!

Does this mean a price reduction on Paragon products that offered the WinPE download??

 

I just looked at my downloads for HDM2011S. Not even my last download is available! One option only, to upgrade to HDM2012. I assume that the WinPE download is available for it still??

It's still listed in the product description. Pressure to upgrade is now on.

 

In my case, all downloads are still available, including the WinPE for HDMS 11, with an "Upgrade" sign, although I upgraded to 12 several weeks ago. I accepted a $25 e-mail offer, a day later I received another upgrade offer, this time for $35.

 

You got upgrade deal to HDM2012S from HDM2011S? I've never received any deals by email since my deal for HDM2011S in early 2011.

EDIT:
The upgrade is for the price of $25! Hmmm, I think that I'll take it.

 

I purchased HDM2012 a few weeks ago and just received the same email, I jumped from Acronis just for the easy winpe were you can load any driver needed, I guess we not going to get any HDM2012 program updates as they come out, only option is to make my own, but I could done that with Acronis and saved the money. Microsoft

 

Haven't heard of this news anywhere else other than this thread. Are you sure it all WinPE or just windows 8 based WinPE to be released in the future?

 

This is what I received, Microsoft has changed its license conditions, does not mention win 7 or 8, I think it means all winpe, I wonder if that include the Professional Edition's as well.

 

From what I can gather it is just a license dispute between Microsoft and Paragon. So, only Paragon users are effected, for now.

 

Drive Copy Professional is featured on BitsDuJour today, and in response to a query about WinPE, this was posted about 30 mins ago by Pavel Astafurov (a Paragon representative):

http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/...gn=e65bedcc51-DailyBits-PC-B&utm_medium=email

So it looks like there is no need to worry.

 

Wonderful news!
(something like what I expected)

 

That's good news, but wouldn't it have made sense to include that in the Email? I just got the same email being discussed in this thread, and was a bit alarmed.

Also, I wonder if it means having to use WAIK. I ran into that when trying out Macrium. It was 1.7GB for the d/l, and then the installation took up 1.3GB on the system drive. I couldn't wait to get that stuff off of my h/d's. I copied the WAIK iso to a flash drive, so at least I won't have to d/l it all over again.

 

Oh, I totally agree, there would have been no harm in simply stating that another means of building the WinPE environment was being planned. Having got the same email, I was even starting to think about other backup products going forward (after looking at the pricing of the Paragon Business products ).

 

And while it's great that Pavel discussed the issue on that other forum, wouldn't it have made more sense to simply post some sticky HERE, on the official Paragon help site?!!!

 

Calling this site the "Official Paragon Site" is a bit of a sick joke. Apart from a post the other day on the giant HDM 2012 thread that appeared to be from Paragon there is no official Paragon presence on this board. Unfortunately users state their problems here and expect it will get handled/corrected by Paragon.

Even beat-up Acronis had a much better presence here when their forum was hosted by Wilders.

There is a lot more to properly supporting a product than just a bunch of coders in the backroom.

 

I kinda noticed that.

Fortunately, there are some very helpful posters here, which compensates somewhat for the lack of official support.