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Macrium Reflect Free Edition Ending

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Went to update Macrium Reflect Free this morning and saw this:

Macrium Reflect Free – Service Announcement
This is to notify that Macrium Reflect Free Edition is being retired. Security patches will be provided until 1st January 2024, but there are no planned feature changes or non security related updates following this update.
Note: This notice only applies to Macrium Reflect Free.
Please see the section ‘Macrium Reflect Free Product – End Of Life (EOL)‘ in our support policy for more information.

This just plain sucks.

Also, Macrium Reflect Free was updated:
Bug fixes and Improvements v8.0.7279 – 10th January 2023
viBoot – VirtualBox VMs sometime would not show in viBoot GUI. This has been resolved.
Imaging – When reading some Bitlocker volumes, Reflect could attempt to allocate an erroneously large block of memory. This has been resolved.
System Restore – Staging a system restore from Windows would sometimes fail to automatically reboot after the restore completed within the rescue environment. This has been resolved.
General – Lower than actual write speed values were shown in Disk Write Performance tool. This has been resolved.
Download

*EDIT – 1600hrs
Just to clear things up. While unfortunate, this isn’t an immediate emergency/issue. Macrium Reflect Free will continue to work for years and should at least work through the demise of Windows 11, at least and especially for how I use it. I make a bootable USB drive that uses WinRE, This insures that the appropriate drivers for my computer are included. I also occasionally create another USB drive that uses Windows PE, with this I include a host of drivers good across many computers. This USB drive is the only way I create and restore images.
See:
The Macrium Rescue Environment
What are the differences between WinRE and WinPE? And which one should I use?

Software I Use – 2021 Edition

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A while back someone asked me to do a freeware guide for Windows 10 like I have for other Windows operating systems. My heart wasn’t in it. While there is excellent free software out there, in many cases you get what you pay for. I’m tired of talking about second best software I don’t use. So below is a list of the software I have installed on at least one of the 8 PC’s I have scattered across my house.
[Read more…] about Software I Use – 2021 Edition

O&O ShutUp10 Updated

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Version 1.8.1421
NEW: Support Windows 10 Version 21H1
New: Disable “Meet now” in the task bar on this device
NEW: Disable “Meet now” in the task bar for current user
NEW: Disable news and interests in the task bar on this device
NEW: Disable news and interests in the task bar for current user
Startup of application optimized
Download | Changelog

O&O ShutUp10 1.8.1420

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***edit 1150hrs
Despite the changelog saying this issue is fixed it is in fact not. See pic below.

1.8.1420 – released March 30, 2021
FIX: Disable telemetry
FIX: Disable automatic driver updates through Windows Update
Available in German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Chinese (simplified)
Download | Changelog | Home Page

*edit 0915hrs
Here are the registry changes O&O Shutup10 version 1.8.1420 made when turning on “Disable Telemetry”

Changed from 0x00000001 = Enabled/Normal to 0x00000000 = Disabled/Ignore
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\WMI\Autologger\AutoLogger-Diagtrack-Listener]
“Start”=dword:00000000

Changed from 0x00000002 = Automatic to 0x00000004 = Disabled
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\DiagTrack]
“Start”=dword:00000004

Changed from 0x00000003 = Manual to 0x00000004 = Disabled
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\dmwappushservice]
“Start”=dword:00000004

***edit 1150hrs
See: https://www.tweakhound.com/2021/03/18/oo-shutup10-issue/
Just like before the the dmwappushservice gets rest a while after reboot.