Is there an advantage in choosing 2004 over 1709?  Just curious what's different.

I have found that one advantage is that it recognises Windows storage spaces again, because the relevant driver in v1709 is too old. A disadvantage could be, depending on one's computer configuration and the USB drive(s) one uses, that some USB drives are not recognised anymore.

I rebuilt the WRBM and rescue media with PE10 v2004.  Both methods boot correctly and see the external USB drives my images are stored on.  The 2004 download is stored on my computer but I'm wondering if it overwrites the 1709 version or is stored as a separate file?  Also, if a user wanted to return to 1709 for some reason, is that possible?

Thanks!

I would think the Macrium Download Agent would offer you the choice of which WinPE ZIP file to download.  You should be able to choose the 1709 one, save it, and then point the Rescue Media Builder wizard to it to use for creating Rescue Media.

Presumably a larger built-in driver library for better compatibility. Not aware of any feature adds, but I also haven’t looked. But I think if you use 8.1, WinPE 10 will use 2004 with no option to use 1709 (apart from using a custom WIM, I guess). And if you use 7.2 through 8.0, WinPE 10 uses 1709. If you use the download agent to pull the “opposite” release, J think Rescue Media Builder will just tell you that WinPE 10 has to be downloaded.

The download agent gives a choice which PE version you want to download if you select to download WinPE only (and not Reflect). You can still download v1607 if you wanted to.
Once you have built a rescue medium with WinPE v2004 it is only possible to go back to WinPE 10 v1709 when you manually delete some folders. The reason is that Reflect only has separate folders for the various WinPE versions and WinRE, but not for separate builds. I have succeeded in downgrading from v2004 to v1709 by deleting the WinPE 10 repository folder (C:\ProgramData\Macrium\Reflect\Windows Kits\10\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\) as well as the staging area folder (C:\Boot\macrium\WA10KFiles; this is a system folder, therefore you have to enable the option in your file browser to show system files and folders in order to be able to delete it). When the rescue medium is then built again it finds no local WinPE 10 anymore and asks to download it. You can then click Browse and point the RMB to the WinPE 10 v1709 zip file that you have downloaded with the download agent. After this, you will still get a message asking to download the more recent v2004, but after clicking No the RMB will use v1709.

EDIT: this is an informative knowledgebase page where the process of the Rescue Media Builder is described.

+x

 

jphughan - 2 February 2023 9:54 PM

Presumably a larger built-in driver library for better compatibility. Not aware of any feature adds, but I also haven’t looked. But I think if you use 8.1, WinPE 10 will use 2004 with no option to use 1709 (apart from using a custom WIM, I guess). And if you use 7.2 through 8.0, WinPE 10 uses 1709. If you use the download agent to pull the “opposite” release, J think Rescue Media Builder will just tell you that WinPE 10 has to be downloaded.

If you build a rescue medium for v8.0 now it will also use WinPE 10 v2004 or ask to upgrade v1709 to v2004 (I don;t now about v7). If you want to use v1709 you will need to download WinPE 10 v1709 manually and then when building the rescue media choose Browse instead of Download and point to the downloaded v1709 zip file. You also will need to reply No when asked if you want to use the more recent v2004 instead of the v1709 file that you just selected.

Thank you everyone.  I believe I understand things better now.