Solved Latest Macrium Reflect 8 updates

Bree said:

I'm not sure why you seem to have problems building bootable media, but I have just successfully built the 8.1.7771 .wim to update the boot menu, and then updated my rescue usb. I've booted from the usb several times now, and confirmed that 7771 does show the list of existing backups again.

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I'm not sure, either. A while back, I had a problem with the rescue media, and someone pointed out that I should try formatting the USB disk as FAT32. That seemed to work. Maybe I should go back and format the USB as NTFS now, and see whether the Build RM works. I'll have to re-install 7771, but that's no big deal. Whatcha think? Worth trying NTFS? I was sure Lenovo PCs required bootables as FAT32. Maybe not, but my FAT32 bootables made by 7675 work perfectly.

Mine updated just fine, but I did a fresh install with the prior one. Rescue medial should be Fat32.

Yeah all three of my 7675-built RMs (all FAT32) boot into the REnv for MR. But the ones I've built from 7762 and 7771 won't boot. I just get sent to the blue screen sequence that starts with identifying my keyboard layout (???).

Wisewiz said:

Help About, though, still showed N/A, so I thought I'd try Help > Update license key. That had my license pre-entered, and it called the server and confirmed the license number and my name. Then when I checked Help > About, my name was there. Maybe that's all one had to do to get the name instead of N/A, but we shouldn't have had to do that.

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I didn't have to do anything like that. The first thing I checked after patching to .7771 and rebooting was Help > About. My name was there again.

Wisewiz said:

Yeah all three of my 7675-built RMs (all FAT32) boot into the REnv for MR. But the ones I've built from 7762 and 7771 won't boot. I just get sent to the blue screen sequence that starts with identifying my keyboard layout (???).

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With your name not returning in Help > About, and your issues building rescue media there's something not quite right. If it was me I would re-install Macrium.

@Wisewiz

Ingenious. I guess Macrium just had to call home about you. Might only be a problem with those customers who speak Ancient Geek!

Glad you solved it! Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

Wisewiz said:

I'm not sure, either. A while back, I had a problem with the rescue media, and someone pointed out that I should try formatting the USB disk as FAT32. That seemed to work. Maybe I should go back and format the USB as NTFS now, and see whether the Build RM works. I'll have to re-install 7771, but that's no big deal. Whatcha think? Worth trying NTFS? I was sure Lenovo PCs required bootables as FAT32. Maybe not, but my FAT32 bootables made by 7675 work perfectly.

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It depends if your bios will efi boot from ntfs. Most don't. Gigabyte introduced it a while ago with bios updates for the 300 series motherboards. Which means bios can be flashed using an ntfs usb stick and boot media can boot in efi mode using an ntfs usb stick. Saves splitting wim files or fooling around with multiple partitions on usb stick. Though taking bios screenies still needs fat32 usb stick the last time I tried it.

I dont know how many other manufacturers have done the same.

Bree said:

With your name not returning in Help > About, and your issues building rescue media there's something not quite right. If it was me I would re-install Macrium.

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@Bree: Advice, please: better to uninstall and re-install, or just install new over old?

I did the update earlier and all is fine

I just updated rebuilt boot menu and iso, and all is fixed.

N/A bug is now N/A .

You can now see backip images in winpe.

Wisewiz said:

@Bree: Advice, please: better to uninstall and re-install, or just install new over old?

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I would always try latter first, and do uninstall/reinstall if you get issues.

Wisewiz said:

@Bree: Advice, please: better to uninstall and re-install, or just install new over old?

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Try installing over first, if that doesn't work then uninstall. Make sure you note your key first. The reinstall should find your key is still in the registry after the uninstall, but it's best to be safe.

You can get the installer v8.1.7771_reflect_home_setup_x64.exe using the Reflect Home Download Agent:
https://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v8/ReflectDL.exe

Macrium Reflect 8.1.7771 Update​

A fix for the folder list problem

Macrium Reflect update v8.1.7771 Bug fixes and improvements.

Bree said:

Latest Update

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Added to this topic...

.7771 all good here.

Bree said:

With your name not returning in Help > About, and your issues building rescue media there's something not quite right. If it was me I would re-install Macrium.

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Okay, well, I re-installed, rebooted, and tried again. Report, as always, was Rescue media successfully built. But it wouldn't work on either of my machines. Got to thinking about the loading windows as MR prepares to write the rescue disk. On my working 7675 MR, as the write RM starts, it says writing xxx of 800+ MB. On my installs of 7771 and 7762, I noticed that it said writing xxx of 700+ MB. That struck me as a glitch, even though MR reported success in building the USB RMs.

I think, though I don't know, that the "boot" folder that Macrium builds during the installation plays a role in building the RMs. I compared the boot folder on my 7675 machine with the boot folder on my 7771 (and, earlier, 7762) machine and found that on the machine that successfully builds RMs, boot was the same size and size on disk, while on the machine that couldn't build an RM successfully, boot was considerably different in size (huge!) and size on disk (much smaller). On the supposition that the boot folder was involved, I deleted the boot folder on the 7771 machine (had to take ownership first, to delete it) and then opened MR and went to the Rescue disk panel, and found "WIM not found. Build to repair." When it finished, I checked and found that the new boot folder had size and size on disk equal, as on the working machine.

Next step was to reformat a USB drive and try again, and then to test the disk. It worked perfectly. Tried it on my other machine, and it worked there, too.

Someone will probably tell me that this was all more luck than skill, but I won't mind. MR 7771 is now on both my machines, and is able to rebuild RMs on both. The new installation didn't work, but the new "boot" folder (and things associated with building that folder from scratch, probably having to do with the Windows Boot Manager boot files on my C: disk) did it.

Wisewiz said:

I think, though I don't know, that the "boot" folder that Macrium builds during the installation plays a role in building the RMs.... On the supposition that the boot folder was involved, I deleted the boot folder on the 7771 machine (had to take ownership first, to delete it) and then opened MR and went to the Rescue disk panel, and found "WIM not found. Build to repair." When it finished, I checked and found that the new boot folder had size and size on disk equal, as on the working machine.

Next step was to reformat a USB drive and try again, and then to test the disk. It worked perfectly. Tried it on my other machine, and it worked there, too.

Someone will probably tell me that this was all more luck than skill, but I won't mind. MR 7771 is now on both my machines, and is able to rebuild RMs on both.

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OK, I'll tell you that it was luck

But by luck you forced Reflect to rebuild the WIM from scratch which fixed it for you. The C:\Boot\Macrium folder contains the Staging Area where all the work to build a WIM is done. A slightly easier way to force a WIM rebuild is to hold down the Ctrl key and click on the Build button.



If you are interested in exactly how the rescue media builder works, see this Knowledge Base article.

Staging Area​

The Staging Area is re-populated each time the rescue media is re-built. Immediately after the Windows Image (WIM) file is copied to the Staging Area, it is mounted and the current version of Macrium Reflect is copied to the WIM file system along with required components and additional files extracted from WaikFilesxNNnnn.exe.

PE Version	Location
WinRE	C:\boot\macrium\WinREFiles
3.1	C:\boot\macrium\WAIKFiles
10	C:\boot\macrium\WA10KFiles
5.0	C:\boot\macrium\WA5KFiles
4.0	C:\boot\macrium\WA4KFiles

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Bree said:

But by luck you forced Reflect to rebuild the WIM from scratch which fixed it for you. The C:\Boot\Macrium folder contains the Staging Area where all the work to build a WIM is done. A slightly easier way to force a WIM rebuild is to hold down the Ctrl key and click on the Build button.

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When I had deleted boot and re-opened MR and hit Rescue Media, the first thing I saw at the top of that panel was WIM not found. Build to repair. I hit build (without using Ctrl, because in the absence of WIM, the Ctrl (Force rebuild) wasn't needed), and it did the trick. I had to go through the same thing on machine number 2, because it couldn't build an RM successfully with 7771. Now they're both working. Many thanks for your help with this.

Wisewiz said:

I had to go through the same thing on machine number 2, because it couldn't build an RM successfully with 7771. Now they're both working.

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I'm very glad to hear that it's working for you now.