Imaging with free Macrium

Thanks Keith. Long time ago I have used AllwaySync. So I am familiar with the principle. But I always like to watch your nice videos. Do you make those with PowerPoint ?

No Wolfgang. I have Cyberlink Power Director. It came pre-installed. It is about the only bloatware that I kept.

Keith, I had never heard of this program but it does a good job. Sometimes 'bloatware' can be useful.

A PowerPoint presentation would be very similar. Advantage with that is that you can upload it to authorStream as .pptx otr .ppsx. As .pptx the viewer can pace it at his own speed which may be an advantage over a video. You can also narrate the presentation and insert video clips and other links - but your program can do that probably too.

Here is an example of a presentation/class I held at my computer club early 2011. The material is no more up-to-date but it is to show the PP possibilities. For some reason the many links on the second page don't work from the webside. But all the other links seem to work. Many pictures are links - scout them out.

Shopping for Technology V2 Ppt Presentation

That looks like a good facility Wolfgang.

This laptop had two peices of useful bloatware.

1. MS Office Home and Student 2007 with a free upgrade to 2010.
2. Cyberlink media suite. I only kept the video editor part of it.

Thanks for the suggestion Sparky,

There is a limit to how many questions and interruptions in RE64. Ideally, it wouldn't ask anything at all. If you ask yet another question "do you want to d/l double driver", it would still need to ask later if you want to ask drivers. Because some will have said no, to DD but might want to add their own specific drivers (e.g. raid ) . The other difficulty is avoiding drivers not wanted, like the 230mb of Nvidia - ridiculous to put those in. It would become immensely complicated to do and a lot of questions for the user.

TheArtfulDodger said:

Hello, SIW2:

After reading some of the entries above, it occurred to me that, instead of asking about drivers, you could instead find (if it's present) and execute Double Driver and incorporate the results in your completed ISO?

I had not seen Double Driver before, but it seems like a simple, all-inclusive way of accomplishing the task of adding drivers?

Thanks again,

Sparky

Then, how does one decide which drivers to include? Is it safe to assume that WinPE has all of the drivers that one needs in order to restore an image - and the image will contain any others the machine needs?

Sparky

kado897 said:

That looks like a good facility Wolfgang.

This laptop had two peices of useful bloatware.

1. MS Office Home and Student 2007 with a free upgrade to 2010.
2. Cyberlink media suite. I only kept the video editor part of it.

Yeah, sometimes you get a break. I just bought this little Asus Transformer for $329. It also came with free Office 2010. Considering the price of this Transformer that was a good deal. Now they already are raising the price again.

This Transformer works better than I had ever expected. Very fast (boots in 28sec - Event 100 in Event Viewer), excellent screen (even I can see things well with my weak eyes), the speakers are also very good. I only wish they had put a second USB port into the base - 1 USB3 port is nice but not a lot and I really hate those micro USB ports. The OTG cables are always defunct - fortunately they are cheap. You have to get them by the dozen..

I like the microSD card slot. That gives a lot of additional storage because the 32GB internal SSD is not big - although after the installation of the 32bit Windows 8.1, Office and a few programs I still had 15GBs of free space. That should be enough for the coming programs and updates. My data I put on the microSD card and the wife (it is really her pet) has all her data on a 64GB stick anyhow. For images I use an external SSD that I had lying around.

Winre.wim already has the generic drivers MS provides. Exactly the same as you get when you fire up windows 7 installation media, or use the recovery options from MS built in F8 function.

Win7 winre does not include usb3 drivers ( neither does win 7 itself). Therefore if you are using RE64 on win7 , the program will add usb drivers automatically. That will be fine for just about everybody.

There will be a few advanced users using an esoteric RAID setup or some other geeky thing. They will know what drivers they want to add to support that.

Is it safe to assume that WinPE has all of the drivers that one needs in order to restore an image

Yes

and the image will contain any others the machine needs?

Yes, unless the machine has some unusual geeky things going on. In that case, windows itself will not support it natively, other drivers must have added. In which case there is a function to install drivers to the running winpe . It is on the menu. It is extremely unlikely you will come across that.

TheArtfulDodger said:

Then, how does one decide which drivers to include? Is it safe to assume that WinPE has all of the drivers that one needs in order to restore an image - and the image will contain any others the machine needs?



Sparky

Is it safe to assume that WinPE has all of the drivers that one needs in order to restore an image

This may be true for the general case. But for my special case there is a problem.

The WinPE for free Macrium that I produced on a 32bit Windows 8.1 does not contain the driver for the microSD card which I am trying to use to place images. The installed free Macrium can image and recover from the microSD card but the WinPE stick cannot. It does not see the microSD card.