How to restore Macrium Images on a Remote PC

Ok, this is slightly theoretical as I have yet to test it, but I am sure it will work.

One of the problems with restoring Macrium images is that you have to boot in Winpse mode (I do not know any tools that will do it from (same) Windows).

Doing this on a remote PC though is much harder, as you need physical access to PC.

I have thought of a couple of ways around that:

1) Probably easiest solution is to have a second installation of Windows in a dual boot configuration (with windows in a vhd hiding boot option until needed), then you can remote to that, and use Macrium Reflect in normal Windows mode to restore backup image to other Windows installation.

2) Slightly more complicated but much more space efficient solution is to install @Kyhi's winpse recovery drive from "Software and Apps" as a dual boot option by making a small partition max 2GB.

This winpse drive has a tool called anydesk.exe that allows you to remote to pc in winpse mode (teamviewer etc cannot do that unless you have very old versions on both host and remote pc).

Then you will be able to run Macrium Reflect remotely to restore images.

The only tricky part I cannot think of an elegant solution (in either solution) is how to select to boot from whichever Rescue environment of option 1 or option 2.

I could set the Rescue environment as the default boot option, but that is not a great idea.

At the moment, the only way I can think of is to manually change default boot drive with MSConfig (if I want it visible) or using advanced booting options from system, advance systems.

I guess because this is only for emergency situations, this is not a big deal.

As an aside, I am thinking of creating a custom cutdown version of @Kyhi's tool, with only Macrium Reflect, and Anydesk.exe and nothing else, so if other user access it, they cannot run all the other tools.

Thinking Out Loud Here..

Windows 10 now puts the recovery tools (winre) partition Last.

If you where to make that a 2gb partition and then replace the winre.wim with the recovery tool boot.wim (renamed winre.wim)

one should be able to remote in to the pc and trigger the windows 10 recovery environment


Also if one was to use the Macrium Boot Media - boot.wim

one could add Anydesk to that Macrium boot.wim /Program Files and then launch anydesk.exe by modifing

"X:\windows\system32\Winpeshl.ini" by adding a line to launch anydesk

[LaunchApp]
AppPath = %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Program Files\Anydesk\Anydesk.exe


I have not used Marciums Network feature, but one would have to connect to network first

Not tested, just thinking out loud....
kyhi

Kyhi said:

Thinking Out Loud Here..

Windows 10 now puts the recovery tools (winre) partition Last.

If you where to make that a 2gb partition and then replace the winre.wim with the recovery tool boot.wim (renamed winre.wim)

one should be able to remote in to the pc and trigger the windows 10 recovery environment


Also if one was to use the Macrium Boot Media - boot.wim

one could add Anydesk to that Macrium boot.wim /Program Files and then launch anydesk.exe by modifing

"X:\windows\system32\Winpeshl.ini" by adding a line to launch anydesk

[LaunchApp]
AppPath = %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Program Files\Anydesk\Anydesk.exe


I have not used Marciums Network feature, but one would have to connect to network first

Not tested, just thinking out loud....
kyhi

I have added Macrium Reflect as boot option (using your slightly modified scripts) - works great on a tablet as you can save a lot of space by not having Macrium installed in Windows - less flexible but for tablet, a full backup only takes approx 10 minutes.

Yeah, I forgot that you have to get macrium connected to network - doh. Some interesting challenges.

As a thought, whenever I used your rescue drive, I always had to manually start up network app and connect to the network. If that part could be automated, and anydesk automatically started (it has a remote unattended access function), then that would be a solution.

Edit:- took me a bit off faffing around, but have got @Kyhi's winpse environment booting anydesk automatically, and setup for unattended access.

Only bit I need to workout now is how to automate connecting to a wifi network. I am sure this is possible - just have not worked out how yet.

I have played around with this - penetwork is launched via registry settings or by the penetwork.ini file in the same directory as exe.
I have setup the ini file to use wifi network profile as default. and can autorun penetwork at startup..
But I still have to manually select the wifi hardware/wifi network card and then apply the profile settings..
penetwork prefers to connect to a lan card, I guess...

Also Google has a Team Viewer extention/add-on that works with the google browser in PE..

I have a 28mb file that would need to be extracted to users/default/appdata/local/google/chrome/"user data"

or you could add the extention into google and then copy that "user data" into your mounted PE image

there is also a registry entry that would need to be made

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Chrome\PreferenceMACs\Default\extensions.settings]
"oooiobdokpcfdlahlmcddobejikcmkfo"="E5768CBC0550326396A66920ABB32C462E42662E4230D06EF75BFDCA49712B31"

Kyhi said:

I have played around with this - penetwork is launched via registry settings or by the penetwork.ini file in the same directory as exe.
I have setup the ini file to use wifi network profile as default. and can autorun penetwork at startup..
But I still have to manually select the wifi hardware/wifi network card and then apply the profile settings..
penetwork prefers to connect to a lan card, I guess...

Also Google has a Team Viewer extention/add-on that works with the google browser in PE..

I have a 28mb file that would need to be extracted to users/default/appdata/local/google/chrome/"user data"

or you could add the extention into google and then copy that "user data" into your mounted PE image

there is also a registry entry that would need to be made

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Chrome\PreferenceMACs\Default\extensions.settings]
"oooiobdokpcfdlahlmcddobejikcmkfo"="E5768CBC0550326396A66920ABB32C462E42662E4230D06EF75BFDCA49712B31"

Thanks for this and pm.

I could not find anyway of starting PE network automatically to wifi like you.

I decided I would simply install normal Windows in a separate partition, hide that and hide boot entry, and use that as I can easily connect to that using normal teamviewer once unhidden and boot entry reinstated (changing default boot to that version),I simply run Macrium Reflect as normal.

It uses more space but no big deal.