No more WinPE?

[xtabber]

I received an email this morning from Paragon with the following message:

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.

If you haven’t downloaded your WinPE from the Paragon website yet, we recommend you to do so by March 30, 2012.

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!

I've been using Paragon Hard Disk Manager Professional for years and one of the benefits of their WinPE recovery environment is that you get to use the same full product that gets installed on a Windows system.

Does anyone know if Microsoft is putting the cabosh on WinPE  altogether, or if they just raised the price to the point at which Paragon no longer felt they could afford to provide the environment to users.  Are other products that offer WinPE also affected?

[40hz]

Does anyone know if Microsoft is putting the cabosh on WinPE  altogether, or if they just raised the price to the point at which Paragon no longer felt they could afford to provide the environment to users.  Are other products that offer WinPE also affected?

Newest version of WinPE itself is available on Microsoft's TechNet site as part of their AIK package. I don't think they make it available as a separate download however. The VistaSP1/Server2K8 version was also available here last I looked. Same deal with that. You'll need to grab the entire AIK package (1.3 - 1.7Gb) to get WinPE.

Nothing on the Reatogo, BartPE or UBCD websites about needing to pull it. But they're using the old versions.

[Curt]

I have plenty Paragon licenses including WinPE, but have not (yet) been contacted by Paragon - maybe they are telling us  s l o w l y , so not all begin downloading 250MB at the same time. But your post makes me wonder what will happen to especially my 'Online WinPE Builder Service'.


Edited:
Now I too have received the alert from Paragon.

[4wd]

Nothing on the Reatogo, BartPE or UBCD websites about needing to pull it. But they're using the old versions.

But they don't use WinPE per se What I meant, (but my brain deserted me), was unlike Paragon they're not distributing a ready-made PE, they build a replica from scratch using your Windows installation or CD.

BTW, Winbuilder will give you the WinPE 3.x environment because it can use Windows 7 and 8 as the source.  Also, someone has managed to do WinPE 4 to a USB Flash drive using Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows® 8 Consumer Preview.

On a side note, I wonder how that impacts Paragons WinPE Builder?
For $20/year, IIRC, you could log in and create your own customised WinPE, (providing you had the Professional of higher version of their products).

[x16wda]

Never fear, Paragon sent out an update today.  We'll just have to build it ourselves:

New service after April 1st, 2012: Paragon Boot Media Builder!         

Don’t worry: you won’t have to do without the convenience of the Paragon WinPE medium that you’re used to. After April 1st, 2012, you can download the Paragon Boot Media Builder which will help you conveniently create your own WinPE CD, DVD or USB stick yourself. Check your MyAccount section to download the Paragon Boot Media Builder as soon as it is available.

[xtabber]

The update notice from Paragon also says:

a few days ago, we informed you about the change in Microsoft’s licensing policy that no longer allows software vendors to provide WinPE media to their customers directly.

So apparently this is a general change in Microsoft's licensing policy that will affect anyone who distributes a product that includes WinPE. 

I can't figure out what Microsoft hopes to gain by this, unless they are secretly trying to promote Linux as a recovery environment.

[4wd]

Looks like they're going to make their online WinPE Builder service available as a free local executable.  

[Carol Haynes]

WinPE will be the first app for sale on Metro - just $2999 - a bargain!

[4wd]

WinPE will be the first app for sale on Metro - just $2999 - a bargain!

Nope, can't see the smiley and it's a few days early........

[Carol Haynes]

O/T - Love the graphic

[4wd]

Only available in the following products:

Paragon Boot Media Builder is delivered with the following products:

Hard Disk Manager 12
    Suite
    Professional

Hard Disk Manager 11
    Server
    Virtualization Add-on

Partition Manager 11
    Professional
    Server
    for Virtual Server

Backup & Recovery 11 Home

System Backup 11

Drive Backup 10
    Server
    Small Business Server
    Workstation

Drive Copy 11 Professional

Migration Suite for Server

Rescue Kit 11 Professional

Disk Wiper 11 Professional

Virtualization Manager 12 Professional

Macrium Reflect also got hit by the licensing:

This is correct. Unfortunately, MS has pulled the plug on Windows PE licensing globally. Our license with MS expires in 6 months time and after that we will no-longer be able to distribute a pre-built WIM.

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) will still be available for download and we will integrate the WAIK installation and WIM creation more tightly within Macrium Reflect.

This will also affect any AV product that distributes a ready-made WinPE.

[Carol Haynes]

Just to clarify 4wd's post - I just checked My Paragon account.

WinPE images have disappeared from my downloads but every product has the following notice:

We would like to inform you that Microsoft has changed its license conditions, meaning that software vendors will no longer be allowed to offer WinPE media directly.
We recommend you to upgrade to the latest version of your product to get access to our new Paragon Boot Media builder which allows you to create a WinPE boot media yourself.

So in other words MS are basically changing their license conditions simply to make it more difficult and annoying to use WinPE. They aren't removing it per se.

It makes you wonder why they are doing this.

[4wd]

What annoys me a bit is, they've made their Boot Media Builder available for Partition Manager 11 Professional but not for Hard Disk Manager 11 Professional which includes everything PM11Pro can do and more.

That just plain sucks.

[Carol Haynes]

I presume this is because HDM 12 is out.

Looking at my product list all of the product have media builder available - except where upgrades are available.

Annoying - yes - but I guess this is because they are no longer updating older versions. I suppose they can argue that they gave fair warning of the withdrawal of WinPE ISOs and since older product ISOs were effectively fixed there was no need to produce a boot media builder for them.

Strangely I can no longer see any of their Linux boot disk downloads on my account ???

They seem to have gone over entirely to WinPE - which looks like the opposite effect to the one MS were aiming at!

Having said all this - apart from an addition annoying download of 1.7Gb from Microsoft (in the form of an ISO which has to be either burnt, mounted or unpacked before you can install it) the new media builder wizard was very easy to use. Just a shame you can't add multiple products to the same ISO.

It would make sense for Paragon to produce one media builder and you can register whichever products you own to add to the build.

[4wd]

I presume this is because HDM 12 is out.

I know, still doesn't stop it being annoying.

Strangely I can no longer see any of their Linux boot disk downloads on my account ???

IIRC, Linux Boot Media is created from within the programs, (the ISO is part of the install), whereas the WinPE had to be downloaded and written separately.  eg. In HDM11Pro it's called bootcd.iso in the Hard Disk Manager 11 Professional\iso directory.

Except for those free products which specifically run from a Linux Boot CD, I've never seen a separate Linux ISO download in my account.

Just a shame you can't add multiple products to the same ISO.

You can, (albeit in separate WIMs), just requires a little BCD editing on your part

It would make sense for Paragon to produce one media builder and you can register whichever products you own to add to the build.

Agreed.

[Curt]

could this all just be about WinPE 3 being replaced by WinPE 4?