Solved Quick question about Macrium rescue media for 25h2

This may be a dumb question but I run Macrium 8.1, no secure boot so no revocations. I use the same WINPE recovery media across all my Windows 11 devices. Do y'all know if it will be necessary to create new WINPE rescue media for 25h2? (if and when we get it) OR since it's going to be an enablement package will it use the same WinPe as 24h2 does? @Bree

@glasskuter

When you build the Rescue Media the first time... it downloads the proper Windows ADK.
It save that ADK in the Macrium installation directory and uses it over and over, when and if you build new Rescue Media.

So... after revocations, etc., you need to download a new ADK.

Macrium makes that easy for you, and this guide will tell you how...


After the revocations, you need to give MS a couple weeks to update the ADK, then you can just follow the guide above.

Because you're not using Secure Boot, you don't care about any UEFI CA certs. Your PC can use any Macrium WinPE or any bootable Windows ISO going back to W7, and even a future Windows written after Oct 2026. When Secure Boot is disabled, anything is allowed to boot.

WinPE is used as a self-hosted environment so Macrium has a platform to run on. It's like a bootable repair disk, as long as it boots up, you can run whatever software is hosted on the media.

Macrium is pulling the recovery data from another drive source and copying back the entire contents (which include that backup's version of the boot files). It really doesn't care whether it's recovering W10, W11 or whatever. A recovery image is a set of disk volumes and it's agnostic about the files. Of course, Macrium knows it has to make the recovered drive bootable, but it's not pulling those files from WinPE.

Here's a better analogy: If you had a dual-boot setup with W10 & W11, and Macrium backed up both sets of drives, it doesn't force you to make separate WinPE recovery media for each Windows release.

There you go. An explanation using simple words. I love simple words. That explains why I can boot everything I got from one 8.1 recovery media and why I can restore old images of earlier versions of Windows made with an earlier version of Macrium.. Thank you. @garlin