News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Hiren’s BootCD Based on Windows 10 PE X64 by morpheuskafka on Friday October 11, 2019 @04:52PM (#21228357)
As I understand it you're generally allowed to redistribute modified versions of Windows PE that are intended for its allowed use case of system installation, recovery, and configuration. It is common for backup software (ex Macrium Reflect) to include "recovery disk creators" that bundle WinPE with the backup software and drivers.
Re:Hiren’s BootCD Based on Windows 10 PE X64 by ComputerGuru on Saturday October 12, 2019 @01:39AM (#21230918)
Nope. I worked in this industry for a long time (still do) and we had to report to Microsoft every month how many copies we sold and pay them for it.

Then towards the end of the Ballmer days it was decided that program would be ended entirely and it would be illegal to ever redistribute WinPE, and that is still the case today.

Maybe I’ll write about the crazy stories I have from when that decision was made someday. Two weeks to port a WinPE application to Linux, getting approached by ISVs worldwide who had the rug pulled out from under them for some sort of transition help.. fun times!

Re:Hiren’s BootCD Based on Windows 10 PE X64 by mappu on Friday October 11, 2019 @05:59PM (#21228875)
No, not any more - the PE licensing changed to only allow this if the PE image is created by the same user. Tools like Macrium now download the WADK SDK and generate an image at runtime.

Distributing prebuilt images like this violates the current PE license AFAICT.

Re:Hiren’s BootCD Based on Windows 10 PE X64 by vulpessarl on Friday October 11, 2019 @06:17PM (#21228999)
Because of licensing issues like the above: I've a lighter version of the program like this (also based on Windows 10 PE) - called "MiniNT" (https://github.com/VulpesSARL/MiniNT5-Tools), and is fully open source, including the scripts to build the ISO (and other images) from scratch. Is supported in both 32 and 64 Bit editions. The 64 bit edition also can execute 32 Bit executables. It also can boot from USB, CD-ROM as well PXE Network.
Re:Hiren’s BootCD Based on Windows 10 PE X64 by Havoc on Friday October 11, 2019 @05:54PM (#21228828)
> allowed to redistribute [..] use case of [..] recovery

Fair. That would appear to answer the question. Thanks.