jaclaz

Hmmm, never heard about that. Well, you never know. As a matter of fact the WIMBOOT (or WOF driver) is something that has been added in Windows 8.1, basically it is a "simple" enough approach, it is a kernel driver that can interpret a .wim file as if it was already an applied volume, so it does not in itself constitute anything particularly "complex" to deal with. But we are still in the earlier misunderstanding. Microsoft advocates the use of a "recovery environment" which is based on a "normal" .wim, the WinRE.wim, starting from Vista, the situation AFAIK is/was the following: with Vista the method was recommended but very few OEM used itwith 7 it was strongly recommended and a few OEM's ditched their own "custom" recovery environment and adopted the MS waystarting with 8 the "recovery environment" became mandatorystill they are two different things, one is the "recovery environment" (which is a kind of "built-in PE") and one is the "recovery partition" or the "recovery media" that you can create on DVD(s) or on a USB stick. What is now compulsory is the presence of the WinRE, the OEM is free to use the Recovery Environment to apply/restore the mass storage device to "factory state" but remains free to use a completely different, custom, approach to obtain the same. A number of low-cost/small SSD sized tablets may use Wimboot lately as the advantage it has is that the senseless amount of bloat a Windows install represents is strongly reduced due to the WIM format compression, though this only works initially as each and every subsequent update is going to be stored "flat" on the device (and it seems like the functionality will be removed in Windows 10), see: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173786-whats-up-with-the-bevy-of-optional-windows-81-updates/ From the contents of the USB drive you have, it does seem like a "normal" install/recovery, probably aimed to be saved on both DVD's and USB stick, if you check the size of the .swm's they should be compatible with DVD sizes, the presence of the reagent.xml file is "standard MS", while $PBR_DiskPart and $PBR_ResetConfig are "non-standard" AFAIK. So it is possible that the USB stick you have is a "mixed mode" making use partially of the MS approach and partially on some OEM customizations, the presence of the reagent.xml file implies the use of a WinRE.wim that seemingly you do not have, maybe from it's contents one could try to understand what has "gone wrong": http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=587 jaclaz

Well, historically that is a (mostly unuseful) SAMPLE code for a very limited in features (and with more than one hiccups) RAMDISK driver. JFYI many years ago Christian Ghijselinck took that code and little by little made it into an actually working driver, however nowadays we have much better RAMDISKs around, here is a list of them: http://reboot.pro/topic/1507-ramdisk-and-filedisk-drivers/ more than a few of them are Open Source, so if you are into making a new driver you can have some inspiration. jaclaz

Actually the intended meaning was "While I am actually pretty sure that I could use Clonezilla succesfully for doing that, I pretty much doubt that you will be able to do the same" because I believe that what is done "automagically" in Clonezilla (unless you image the WHOLE disk) is not enough to later perform a "bare metal" recovery. jaclaz

Not really-really. A "Recovery Drive" which has install.swm's is a (poor) replacement for the actual install DVD. If you prefer, there are two kinds of Windows 8/8.1 "Recovery Drives" one which contains only the boot.wim, and one that contains both the boot.wim and the install.wim (or the "partial" install.swm files). It seems that here we have a "third case", with install.swm's and no boot.img @marcusmx5 And what happens if you select the first one? Which EXACT make/model of tablet is it? Each OEM may have introduced one or more changes to the way the "recovery drive" (or the "recovery partition") are created and or should be restored, as an example (related to a Windows 7) Toshiba specifically needed a couple tricks: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/155075-make-a-recovery-disc-from-a-toshiba-recovery-partition/ jaclaz

Well, You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means ... http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/legacy-is-not-a-pejorative.html What I tried to tell you is that while most, but not all, tools are (if you like bells and whistles) working fine, those are the essential things they need to do, while any given tool may fail to get all the relevant data or get too much of them, or fail to restore in the case of a "real" full recovery (i.e. a "bare metal" one). Another thing that you should be aware of is the possible issue with the format in which the data is saved. Many tools use their own "proprietary" format for the DATA, which implies that if - for any reason - the program itself fails in the recovery you cannot use another program instead. As an example, for your intended use, one of the (nice) "features" of Clonezilla, that of saving ONLY used blocks for known filesystems, and then further compress it with gzip, thus providing very compact "images" makes it not so much suitable as it is possible that a recovery partition includes some files that you need to access without restoring the image or some "checks" in unmapped areas, or *whatever*. As well - and as said - a disk may well contain custom MBR+hidden sectors boot code that a tool like Clonezilla may (or may not) save/include in the image. What I would do if I were you would be to do a "real" dd clone of the whole disk, test the clone to be working, then image from the clone through Clonezilla (or other program under test) the parts that you believe are needed to do a "bare metal" recovery, then zap the cloned disk and attempt the bare metal recovery through the tool of choice. If it works, good . If it doesn't, place back the original disk and repeat the test with another tool. jaclaz

Well, if not necessarily, it would be at least "logically". Let's say (hypothetical), that I am a prince of Evil , and I remotely hack PC's (for fun and profit) . I have before me (fiction): 25% of all PC's in the world connected to the internet insecure windows XP systems <- please read as "easy to hack/intrude" 50% of all PC's in the world connected to the internet impenetrable (I told you it was a fiction, didn't I?) Windows 7 systems <- please read as "very difficult to hack/intrude" 12.5% of all PC's in the world connected to the internet even more impenetrable (I told you twice it was a fiction, didn't I?) Windows 8/8.1 systems <- please read as "very, very, really very difficult to hack/intrude" 12.5% (the rest) fractioned in a myriad of less common OS's (that independently from them being more or less secure do not provide a vast enough target)What would I start with? Let me think .... So the logical conclusion is that either XP systems are not so much less secure than later OS's or that Evil princes of hacking do not exist (and they were invented by security firms), of the two possibilities I choose the first one as more probable. There is a third possibility, the Evil princes of hacking do exist, but the security firms are so d@mn good at their work that they succeed in blocking all (or the largest part of) their evil actions before and outside any security measure the OS may provide (which all in all gives the same net result in practice of being not such a difference in security between XP and later MS OS). jaclaz

No, you haven't or they were not "legacy" at all . Basically a partition is (the name says it all) an area of the hard disk, that has a beginning and an end address. These start and end address are recorded in an indexing structure that is a partition table (which is in the MBR or in the first few sectors after it for GPT). So, if you need a part of a whole, you just copy that part and (advised, but not strictly necessary in all scenario's) the information telling you where that part is located (in order to re-collocate it in the same position when restoring or recovery). All you really need is a program capable of copying the sectors from one device to a file, i.e. the traditional (if you want "legacy") UNIX program dd (or any port, derivative or tool having the same capabilities, under Windows I personally use dsfo/dsfi) and *any* program capable of interpreting the indexing data (the partition table). Everything else or "more" that dd (+ a partition table viewer) are (often "nice" but also sometimes "not perfect") feature-filled "overstructures" (user friendly and what not) around these functionalities: understand which and where is the area (i.e. be capable of reading and interpreting the information) copy it understand where it is needed to copy it backMore than the original partition table (which may or may not be relevant, as the information for the partition is anyway in the volume's filesystem BPB ) in the case of the MBR making a backup of it is often VITAL (in the case of these PC's with "recovery partitions") because besides the DATA (i.e. the partition table and the Disk Signature) the CODE contained in it may be "custom" and not easily replaceable, see as an example: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/131620-hp-notebook-the-recovery-partition-could-not-be-found/ As well some of the so-called "hidden sectors" in a MBR style disk may contain part of the booting code. So the Rule of the thumb is: make a copy of the disk from sector 0 (the MBR) up to the beginning of first partition/volumemake a copy of the desired partition/volumewith these data (in both MBR or GPT cases) you have all you need to restore. jaclaz

There are a couple typos here: FOR /F "tokens=2 %delims==" %A should be: FOR /F "tokens=2 delims==" %%A The snippets posted are not "tested and verified" batches, they are examples/ideas and should be double checked, particularly for (stupid, my bad ) typos. jaclaz

Which translates nicely, in my perverted mind into: since an interesting, new, very valid and proved to be working flawlessly technology conflicts with an old, wrong, stupid update method, the former is removed and the latter (due to some of it's inherent shortcomings and more generally to the lack of a proper method in creating the updates) is dumbed down (if possible at all) and made more complex and error prone for the user. Fascinating as my friend Mr. Spock would define it. Compliments to the MS "Internationalizing Team" I mean jaclaz

Well, you can have in the "deploy" batch (say): SET Today=FOR /F "tokens=2 %delims==" %A IN ('TYPE i:\lenovo\domain\blank\last.ini ^| FIND "TheLast"') DO SET Today=%%AIF NOT DEFINED Today ECHO ERROR...&PAUSE"imagex /apply i:\lenovo\domain\blank\%today%\image.wim" and have in the "imaging" one: SET Today=%date:~10,4%-%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%IF NOT EXIST i:\lenovo\base\blank\%Today% MD i:\lenovo\base\blank\%Today%ECHO TheLast=%Today%>i:\lenovo\base\blank\last.iniimagex /compress fast /capture D: i:\lenovo\base\blank\%Today%\image.wim "Laptop Base Image"jaclaz

Not really-really. I mean there are several possibilities, one being that the batch (the one that creates the image in the %today% folder) also creates a hard link (I presume that you are using NTFS) in the main directory or, possibly even better/easier as hardlinks are a bit more difficult to manage, use a softlink (to the file) or a junction point from the %today% directory to a "fixed" place, let's say i:\lenovo\base\blank\last\ http://ss64.com/nt/mklink.html http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html The poor man's way (or on non NTFS) would be to have the "imaging batch" write a simple plain text file, let's say last_to_be_deployed.ini and have the "deploy batch" to parse it and get the actual value of the %today%, i.e. the folder name from which to get the image, or you could get rid of the subdirectories have all the images in i:\lenovo\base\blank\ and assign a meaningful name to the images themselves, like naming the actual image to %today%.img and have the deploying batch use last created one (which would be another advantage as you wouldn't have a zillion of files all named "image.img" and only differentiated - besides creation timestamp - only by the name of the folder in which they are). There are endless possibilities. jaclaz

Yep. It deserves a BIG thumb up. jaclaz

Well, with all due respect (though I understand how your nick over there is wastingtimewithforums), you are wasting time with forums. There is seemingly no way the good guys over there can understand how depriving anyone of choosing (in an informed way) what to do or what to not do is a form of depriving them of a degree of freedom. But, going only very slightly off-topic, in the past there have been quite a few issues with upgrades, particularly on specific hardware, and the good MS guys have historically attempted to brush off critics stating how the issue was limited to a small number of very peculiar hardware combos and that it is materially impossible for them to test an upgrade on every possible make/model of device, something that makes sense, and as a matter of fact it is one of the arguments often used when someone points out how usually Apple updates do not create the same kind of issues, since Apple produces BOTH the hardware and the OS and thus has to carry on a limited number of tests and has the possibility to catch any possible bug becayse the number of scenarios are pretty much limited. The good MS guys adopted the same strategy for a (seriously botched) Windows 8.1 Phone recovery (to go back from testing a Windows 10 release), but they seemingly forgot how in this case the hardware was as well MS : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/20/windows_10_phone_unbricking/ http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_repair/lumia-520521devices-unusable-after-using-windows/c5d072d5-c26e-4a02-907d-fde2ca5e34c7 Please note how UNOFFICIALLY they had to admit that a (small ) number of devices cannot bear the normal transfer speed (that other devices work fine with) and the "solution" is a recovery tool that transfers data (much) slower. Which translated in plain English means there is a (small ) number of defective or however below standard devices we sold you, they cannot be identified and we have no intention whatever to replace them with working ones, we will simply dumb down some parts of the tool to be able to deal with these slower devices. Worse than that the statements: are (to me) terrifying as they imply that till now NOT ENOUGH real-world testing was done and that they are NOT CONFIDENT in the current results of tests up to now. jaclaz

Yes and no. Of course x32 in itself supports UEFI boot, the problem might be in the "matching" of the architecture with the OS bitness, but it can be worked around: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/9b8b18b3-df53-4f00-a584-1b1617b57ea9/windows-7-32bit-uefi-installation?forum=w7itproinstall for 7, not so much, I believe, with 8/8.1. Mind you that this depends only partially on the OS, and quite a lot on the actual UEFI firmware implementation: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/olivnie/archive/2012/12/20/windows-8-uefi-support.aspx So it might be needed to boot to CSM mode and "switch" to a third party UEFI, such as Clover: http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/122 And of course there is the usual mish/mash of MBR vs. GPT, so each case is a bit different and may need one or another workaround, JFYI, with a trick or two it is possible to BIOS boot from a GPT disk without needing a hybrid MBR, and as well it is perfectly possible to UEFI boot from a MBR disk. jaclaz

BUT, strangely enough, they also represent the ONLY ONES that actually bought/are using Windows 8/8.1, as the Enterprises are traditionally slower to change an OS (as this will often include changing the hardware) and right now, set aside the few ones that are still clinging to XP, are en masse still using Windows 7 on non newly acquired hardware and many also on newly (last two years or so) acquired devices, exception made for new stupid tablets (please read as "Surface Pro" 1, 2 and 3 and similar) that however didn't seemingly sold that well (in absolute terms and even worse in the Enterprise market). jaclaz

Before I forget, OT but not much , look what happened recently to TV5 Monde: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/hacked-french-network-exposed-its-own-passwords-during-tv-interview/ please note how, besides being posted on the blackboard, the password for the YouTube account was a very complex one, i.e. "lemotdepassedeyoutube", and now, for NO apparent reason, a PASSWORD CLOUD https://web.archive.org/web/20150202135829/https://xato.net/wp-content/xup/passwordscloud.png jaclaz

Welcome to the club of people missing Ponch's points , Nuhi http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173766-wheres-the-download-gone/ jaclaz

Maybe the issue is not really an issue, if you know how to deal with it. I mean, what I normally do is to choose a theme for the week. In order to do so, let's say I choose "drones". I go on google and search for them, then click a couple of the results (NEVER the first few ones that are "sponsored ads"). I usually land to any among Amazon, e-bay or (more rarely) to the site of someone actually making the thingies. Then I am set for the whole week or so, any forum or site making use of google ads or similar will be tuned to "drones". Of course I never click of any of these ads, as a matter of fact I have not any intention to buy in any foreseeable future any drone. The funny thing is when I actually look for something to actually buy and after I have ALREADY bought it, wherever I go I find ads for that same something for a few days. I don't think (but I may well be wrong) that the good MS guys have some smarter strategy/mechanisms for targeting ads than the good Google guys, so all will be needed is to do a couple intentional "fake" searches, and you are good to go. The people running the senseless ads will be rewarded as they will believe (wrongly) that the money they spent for these impressions have an actual return in sales (it has not, at least in my case), the google guys are happy because they are given money for this, and all in all I prefer to see nice pictures of drones better than methods to earn money working from home or how to lose weight, etc. All in all I find much more intrusive, deceiving and what not other forms of online advertising, including specifically VigLink (which I believe is used on MSFN also ), in my humble opinion they are if not the root of all evil a bunch of mindless bastards, as periodically, notwithstanding my "opting out" here: http://www.viglink.com/opt-out/ the setting is somehow reset (and as a side note right now the above is not reachable through my Opera, unless I "cloak" it as Firefox or IE). jaclaz

Even worse, possibly , if I recall correctly In some cases this happens/happened the sheer moment you highlighted/selected the mail in the inbox list as it opens/opened a pre-view and executed the whatever the mail contained. jaclaz

... and I presume that not many people with a stupid Windows 8/8.1 tablet has a DVD, and will need to "convert" it to a USB stick or similar . Cannot say if updating the WinRE.wim would be of use in this scenario , however, just to keep everything as together as possible: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173779-is-it-possible-to-update-wimboot-recovery-image/ jaclaz

I am not sure to understand the whole question, it is possible to update the WinRE.wim, but I am not sure to understand what would be the usefulness of this. However check this whole thread: http://reboot.pro/topic/19874-windows-81-uefi-boot-issues/ particularly starting from here: http://reboot.pro/topic/19874-windows-81-uefi-boot-issues/?p=186461 but cannot say if it is what you want/need. jaclaz

And in the rather common case of "large OEM" computers this might be poossible ONLY IF they made the recovery set of DVD's (by definition NO ONE EVER makes them if not the people that have anyway other means to restore/reinstall the OS) OR IF they managed to NOT alter the recovery partition (or IF the new OS still allow the use of the Recovery partition). All in all my guess is that the people currently running 8.1 (from the start or as an upgrade from 8.0) have already had enough troubles and for some sort of karma they will experience less issues than the people still running 7, because all in all the mechanism with the WinRE.WIM are very similar if not downright the same, but I don't think that most OEM 7 used actually that approach, but rather one of the "third party" ones and this might mean troubles. jaclaz

Who knows? Maybe I would have been tricked into believing that it was a released, final program and would not have looked among the pre-release ones. Good , by applying a tiny amount of torture I managed to get the needed info, for the record: http://rloew.x10host.com/prerel.htm You see, it was not too difficult, now the specific info is here for all to be seen. jaclaz

You are welcome, I am sure , knowing that you have a program that can do that is something that I had really missed, maybe in a next stage of awareness I might be able to learn what is the name of the program and what is the that it can do. jaclaz

Thanks a lot for this exceptionally useful piece of news . jaclaz