[TOPIC LOCKED BY ADMIN] MSMG TOOLKIT vs WinReducer

Hello to all guys,
people that visited my topic "UPDATING A WINREDUCED OS: A NIGHTMARE! WHAT PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW !" should have understood that Winreducer does not work anymore with updates (there are also many other broken things, but the update is the most serious one).
I reported this long time time ago in the bug section, but the author didn't even responded to any of my reports included the topic I have just mentioned.
The forum seems completely dead and Icy007 which is just an user like us with no affiliation with the author, is the only one that try to help people and although he is doing his best, he can't help for serious troubles like these for which the author is the only one who can deal with.

Today I also saw some sections of the forums disappeared and I am wondering If I should take these as a sign of abandonment of EX-XXX series development in favour of the new WinreducerOS. Hope that I'm wrong especially for all the people relying on EX!
I am sure it will be an amazing tool, but it's under development from very long time and its release is unknown (meaning that can continue to delay for another year). While waiting for that day, we can't certainly stay with a dead tool for which troubles and bugs are destined to increase over the time (and its inability to install updates is already more than enough).
 
In prevision of this I would like to ask people if they had chance to try MSMG Toolkit and how compares with WR.
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From the birth of this project I saw the author constantly involved in development (on nearly a daily basis). There is a massive community and I always see people getting help from user and author within hours.
From the last pages I have been impressed to see how the author is able to keep the tool always update to work with updates.

What I like is that the tool runs as a command line and this means that can be fully automated for whatever maintenance we need. WR does not accept command line arguments even if this is a feature for which the implementation only takes 20 lines of code.

So, I would like to know what you think and possibly a comparison with a recent version of MSMG because given how much is under heavy development from the beginnig of the project, we can expect that it is completely different from when it was one year ago.

Thanks

Dear Winterstorm,
I am so sorry If I offended you in some way. It has never been in my intention, please accept my apologies.
I joined the forum and project only recently and for the first time, therefore I still have to learn the right behaviour and balance when posting. Something easy for most of the users who open a thread about a problem, get their response and disappears without even say thanks (it also happened to me half of the times I responded to their threads to help), a bit more difficult for persons with passion like me.

I am going to admit all of my faults, but let me clear that I am not the author of this topic:
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Victor123 is the author, not me, I am not responsible for that topic and I have no affiliation with him.
He opened that topic because he was disappointed for the lack of help in the forum. It has nothing to do with my topic concerning updates and most of all, it has nothing to do with me.
At the time you replied I was not even aware of its existence. Please check one by one the comments and you'll see that I only joined the topic a couple of days later and after your comment.
So, why you're saying you answered me when I didn't wrote anything in that topic at the time you posted? I'm afraid that you must have confused me with Victor123.
I fully recognize my faults, but please do not attribute all the faults to me when there are other users extraneous to me which open topics of the same kind.
I take responsibility for my faults, but not for the faults of other poeple too. I am not yet a martyr (although, as you have seen from my update topic, I was on the right way).
And looking again at your comment, what have to do a general announcement like "New Ex-100 versions are coming" with my topic?
It seems you can do the mistake to think that I was the author of that topic even if I didn't wrote there a single word at the time you answered, but I can't do the mistake to miss your three words at the end of your comment and wrongly believe it was the end of Ex series development in favour of WROS.

I am glad to know that you always read all the posts included mines and, as a new user, I was wrong to interpret my unresponded bug reports and topics as a total absence or abandonement of the project.
This means that you saw with you're eyes that I'm not the kind of person who creates a topic or a bug report as soon as I encounter a problem with the claim of an immediate fix and that I only open a topic after having tried myself and without disturbing anyone all the possible tests and workarounds. You know this from the quality details of my bug reports.
This also means that you also saw I was dealing with these problems from December and ALL I was asking (and I stated this multiple times in different topics) was just a quick message of the type "Do not continue to lose time with expriments because WR needs to be fixed, just integrate the updates and install each time from scratch or let try to change this".
You have a life other than WR and given the free nature of the project, as you said (and I totally agree) deserves full respect.
All people deserve this respect especially their time except for me: despite all the efforts, time lost and desperation you clearly saw with your eyes increasing over the time (and I repeat, from December) in trying to fix what seems buggy, I don't even deserve 30 seconds of the time needed to post a quick reply like this because, again, with a simple confirmation like this I would not have even opened that long discussions and this topic (this one) would not have even existed.
I would just have proceeded with the way of integration+reinstall and focused on automating the process. I would have finished everything long time ago without any useless discussions or polemics.
I made this clear so many times and recently also increased font size to made it even more clear, but evidently it was not yet enough until I have been forced to open this topic and use heated tones. Evidently I was asking too much. You found 15 minutes of your time to read the entire long post and all the others, but you didn't found 30 seconds for a quick reply knowing that would have put an end to my suffering. Sounds strange, don't you think?

I understand how you could feel when you put so many efforts in a project and someone says "It lacks even the command line arguments and even if it just needs 20 lines of additional code". Although this statement is true, I can understand how you can feel especially when said with such tones, but you should also try to understand me and my frustration accumulating over the time while you was constatly osservating this and the fact that I was only asking for that quick confirmation.
I believed you was not aware of anything of that topic, but now that you confirmed you saw all I am asking myself what kept you from writing that little confirmatiom I asked so many times. Honestly, I would have prefered much more a total absence from the forum because at least I could have said myself "it's not his fault and he is busy, be patience and wait for his return". Instead you left me with the idea that you could have easily put an end to all with some key presses, but you didn't.

If you says I have given false information, well I didn't said "Ex-Series development is ended". I was asking (look above) if your post focused on WOS, bug reports ignored from very long time, updates failure, section of the forums disappearing etc etc, should have been taken as a sign of the Winreduced ex series end. There's a big difference, don't you think?


If you felt offended for having mentioned MSMG as a possible alternative in case of Ex series end and my attempt to do a comparison, than I am very sorry. I always knew that authors are the main ones interested in comparisons to get ideas for improvements. You're right, all customization software have goods or bad functionalities or troubles and if you have taken this topic as a threat to your software I am very sorry, but I'm afraid you also missed when on one or more threads I said that WR is still the best along with appreciation.
Of course, the tones I used recently didn't helped either and for sure obscured all the nice appreciations.
If for false information you means wrong statements or mistakes in publishing my tests, findings etc, then I am sure you know that I always warned people that they could be full of mistakes and wrong assumptions since I am pretty new to WR. I just shared my experiences, they are not intended to be taken as golden words and I always invite people to correct me.

I am sorry if sometimes I tend to write long and useless posts. You're right if you lose patience for all the time required to read and, as you saw, I'm aware of this and more times I asked users to excuse me.
This is my fault, I tend to be very descriptive and give all the possible details thinking that is a good thing that may help users to get a better understanding, but evidently I am wrong.
I have tried to polish the topic from all the off-topic comments and any comments that may have touched your sensitivity along with the title, new details, more coincisive and intuitive description and so, but the system does not allow me to delete the other user responses and not even the topic itself. Therefore I opened a new one and put all the things there. Please delete the old post, since it is useless and full of confusion. I opened it long time ago when I joined the forun thinking that most of the troubles were my faults for being a newbie, but I soon discovered that they weren't and although I managed to overcome to most of the bugs (regularly reported), there was nothing I could do for the updates and the topic became very long due to this in an attempt to document all issues people may face along with possible workarounds.
When I saw it was going to become what it is now (off topics comments, people asking all sort of things...in other words complete confusion) I tried my best to put a brake on it by changing with a more appropriate title, revisions, inviting users to check my responses in their own threads etc. But it was too late.
You may want to take a look to the new version to see if I missed something. You should notice a red comment at the end where I still hope someone can give me that little confirmation on my assumptions and for which I was waiting from very long time, but do not worry, I am not targeting you because now that I know you was aware from the beginning of this little request (made multiple times) and if you will didn't replied I can't certainly hope now and I really don't want to make you more nervous!
I am targeting someone with long time experience who can spend a minute of his time to reply (hoping that there are still active users). So, don't worry, just give it a quick look only to let me know if there is something that you don't like.

As you can see, most of topics ends with my comments meaning that I started to help people, publish findings, test results. It was my intention to become the most active user and bring my daily contribute to the forum and the project.
Too much enthusiasm and fervor to bring my contributes to the community ended up with a warning of ban for SPAM.
But don't worry, I will stop "spamming" and I will reduce my activity to minimum, but if you feel that I'm only a dangerous spammer, you're the boss and don't need to say "this is my first and last warning", just go ahead and ban me now. I prefer to be guillotined immediately without any waiting.

Sorry again for this long message and sorry if I may sound a bit on the defensive but I had to clear and defend myself from topics that I never opened, spamming accuses and all the rest.
Not sure what you means when you said that I offended other users and their work. I fully admitted my faults to you, but If you intend to accuse me of having done the same with someone else, please be more clear as I always been in all the topics included this. Make names, describe events and facts.
I don't feel to have offended anyone, but if you can prove me that I'm wrong, then I am ready to apologize.
I saved a full screenshot of the old version of the topic to prove my statements and defend me in case of new accuses.

Oh yes, I never forget that EX-100 is free software exactly as I am sure you never forget that without users any software is dead software. 
I am sure you agree with me that, as a new user who wants actively partecipate, I joined the forum in the wrong time, when the tool was full of bugs, people opening threads for the lack of support, bug reports with no response along with your absence lasted for all of that time etc etc.
So, I believed that everything was going to end and I tried my best to keep it alive. Can I be blamed for this?

Thanks for having given to me your attention.
Have a great day you too.
Thanks

Just fixed all the links to point to the new topic. It is safe to delete.

Victor123: trying to destroy my reputation through red votes will not change the fact that you are the author of that topic. I could do the same with you, but I am not that kind of person.
I described facts, events etc and this is more than enough.
You're free to say whatever you want in the topics you open as long as you don't try to make people to believe that thoses topics belong to me.
You're better off to take your responsibilities as I have already done with mines instead of using those dirty tricks.

Hello davidoff458,

I just want to clarify few things with you  :

- I know that you haven't created the topic created by victor ... I was just pointing you to the fact I already answered to the main topic question (is project dead (or abandoned your topic title in here) ?)

- the spam thing is because you opened discussions with titles which are providing false information like this topic title "SWITCHING TO MSMG TOOLKIT IN CONSEQUENCE OF WR NOT WORKING ANYMORE (PROJECT ABANDONED?)" .... which information do you really want to provide by telling this ?

- you haven't respected the forum rules and the forum creation rules

- Do not misinterpret my words, I like your enthusiasm and your passion, even your point of view can be useful for the project (maybe just a little bit excessive) ... and you have to know that I always like to have user point view (bad or good) ... but there are limits I do not want to cross

- and I think your attitude is wrong when you blame another forum user for something : this is a bad and non constructive idea, just saying.

I wish you to have a great day !

What red votes my friend; I did not do anything too you and certainly did note give you a red vote. I tried to make everyone believe you wrote the post; How; I never denied i wrote it. Its there for everyone to see. This is delusional. Winter you know me from inside the forum. We have talked privately also
with messages. You know i did not intend to insult anyone but i was merely expressing my concern for a project i like and have been using for many years.

Hello victor123

No problem my friend ... there are no problems with you. And I'm very happy to have you here since so many years and ... for many years

Don't worry about this, you are not the incriminated user in this matter.

Cheers.

Hello Winter,
thanks for having clarified that you didn't mean to say I was the author of that topic.

Victor, please accept my apologies. I didn't intended to incriminate you in any way, I was just trying to defend myself from what I believed was a topic who offended winter. There was nothing wrong with your topic and I joined it to share with you my thoughts.
When I saw the red vote appearing immediately after my defense, I believed it was coming from you.
There is someone here in the forum who like to have fun and create these ambiguos situations between users.
He just left me another red vote in the same comment and I believe that he is trying in some sort to impersonate you and let me and other people believe that you are the one who left these votes despite now we all know that you are totally extraneos.
I am no longer posting or reporting bugs and other findings because I am tired of this guy and I can't let him to continue to put red votes when all I'm doing is trying to help myself and people. I am just going to do a quick edit on my new post "UPDATING A WINREDUCED ISO..." (winter, do not forget to delete the old topic, its title changed with "To be deleted").
In addition to that, Winter is right, excessive enthusiasm is not good and don't bring real benefits.

Regarding Winreducer Vs MSMG toolkit...
I tried the latter and doesn't even compare to a point that it is useless to talk about it. May be it have less troubles with updates, but I am not surprised given the small amount of things it removes. I have not even installed the resulting ISO since I realized immediately it was a loss of time. Automation is also problematic (does not accept command line arguments) and maximum can do is to load the list of components from a txt file while WR loads the entire configuration through a convenient GUI.
So, WinReducer is the winner not only against MSMG, but also against all the other alternatives. I tried pretty much all of them and I am sure of this. Yes, we all know about the other famous one, but that is a paid software. I am sure that if Winter could be paid for his work on WR, it would be much superior.
We are all waiting for WinReducerOS and new versions of EX-Series, but please dear winter, try to do your best to invent something to make the tool less problematic with updates. May be something like "Live edit" or "Host refresh wizard" or even the "method 1" I eplained in detail in my "UPDATING A WINREDUCED ISO..." topic.
For now I am going to stick with "method 2" illustrated in my topic, but would be amazing if one day we could update a WR system without lose files, apps and settings. Although I posted in the topic some workarounds to reduce a bit better the restoral process, it is still a great amount of work for deeply modified systems (just to mention one, if you use Visual Studio you know how much work can be to restore 40 extensions which unfortunately cannot be restored with a simple backup of the extension folder).
If one day you could make "method 1" working and stable over the time, WR would reach the absolute perfection!

Winter, at this point, from my side, I don't have anything else to say. Everything has been cleared between me, you and Victor. I just changed the title of the topic to avoid to further diffuse wrong informations, but I believe is better to directly delete this topic because there's nothing useful here for the community except for bad people who tries to have fun from misunderstandings.

Have a great day all of you!
Many thanks

I never will comment anymore onto your postings , 
because it is useless 

icy

My dear Icy, you are the only one saint in this forum, but please do no take me wrong. I don't want in any way to criticize your work.
You posted in my new topic "UPDATING A WINREDUCED OS..." a short message where you just ask me to come here.
The main focus of my topic was on how to update a Winreduced os without losing apps, settings and files (method 1). What you wrote above is the same method 2 I already described in my topic in details except all the other optimizations and details in the integration which I omitted volountarly by using a basic configuration to avoid making things more difficult for users. There are already enough info on how to put the updates in the correct locations, cleanups etc and once people get a working basic os like I want, it will be just a matter of playing with further cleanup and customizations.
Also, time ago you posted in my topic the same of the above with just minor changes and you opened a new topic asking winter to adopt these new changes and recommendations. You soon realized there were troubles and now and you're doing the same. I recommend you to take care, evaluate better and do deeper tests before posting.
People that will come here from my topic will see a confused mixture of different arguments that has nothing to do one with each other and if they will ever be able to indentify your message they will get even more confused.
And I already know that when a topic become in this way people may blame me.
This, along with other reasons prevously mentioned included the unsolvible problematic on updates, lead me to go away and abstain from full involvement on posting researches and findings. However I encourage you to try if you feel, but take care.
I marked my old topic for deletion and rebuilt the new one to avoid all of this.

Protecting the activation gui is useless for digital licenses because the system get activated automatically and in my published wccf I didn't removed this functionality. This is something that will do users in final stages based on their type of license.
If I am not wrong, just like your previous published fidings, you're saying to first remove components and save the iso. Then reload the reduced iso and apply updates.
I have already specified in my topic my concerns about the safety of this technique given that we are going to apply updates to an iso with missing components. That's why in my topic I preferred to stay on the safe side (removal of the components from an iso containing integrated updates).
If you got this to work, I must suppose it is probably because you have not removed a component checked from the update.
I have also another concern never explained in my posts since my disappearance: most of the winreduced iso end up with integrity violations with sfc not able to fix them. I have only been able to fix them after running dism /RestoreHealth, but I got removed components back.
So it is unclear if integrity violations are safe and expected in winreduce os (especially the extreme ones) or if this is a serious problem to take care of. So, I have just decided to give up and keep it as is without doing other bug reports because I have realized that if we try to keep everything perfect we will become crazy. However, unlike me (I am a WR user from a month) you are a very long time user and you may want to check this before posting. Even if you don't find integrity violations, I am afraid that, just like happens with updates, it is because you didn't removed the bad components which windows want and who know what they are considering how windows changes each time. I tried to track such things, but I have been forced to give up because is a lost battle.

There are also other things I should say about your config, but really, if I do this topic will become a nightmare.
If you want to talk with me is better to talk in private instead of here or other topics otherwise we will confuse people.
However, as you have already saw in my topic, I have given up and I lost my interest. For me it has come the time to stop experiments and researches on updates (because it is not funny anymore) and stick with method 2 and focuse in the other optimizations and automation of the restoral process. I will only update every 2 or 3 months which is more acceptable (considering that features updates are released twice a year).
In the meantime, could you please remove the comment you posted in my topic to avoid people from being redirected here and become more confused?
Once this topic become dead, winter may want to delete it as I already previously suggested him.

icy007 wrote:

I never will comment anymore onto your postings , 
because it is useless 

icy

Are you talking about me, victor or someone else?
I suspect you are talking about me, but I want to be sure before responding because I don't want to involve other persons.
I would be suprised if you are talking about me because from the beginning of this topic until your first message, I never mentioned you.

UPDATE: Oh Yes, this is how is gone!
This message was yesterday a long message from containing experiments about your WR iso. Now you changed it into this comment.
Ok winter, I am talking directly to you because I am sure you're reading this topic in full and you'll understand me why I decided to keep me out.

Dear Icy, this is what I gently asked in my comment above:
In the meantime, could you please remove the comment you posted in my topic to avoid people from being redirected here and become more confused?
Once this topic become dead, winter may want to delete it as I already previously suggested him.
I never asked to remove your comment here, so why you removed your comment here and left the one in my topic?

As I explained well, my only intent was to avoid people from coming here and see a mixture of off-topic arguments, but you have taken this as a personal offence.

I expressed you my personal concerns on your experiments and explained well the technicals details of my concerns by inviting you to discuss in private with me (to avoid long endless and useless off topics here), but you have taken this as a personal offense. You just ignored my concerns and liquidated me by just saying that my postings are useless.
May be that you're right and I always have the umilty to say that in my topics I am just sharing my learnings (by warning users of possible mistakes).

Since you say that my topics (where I always provide deep technicals details to ensure I don't leave anything out) are useless, at this point I feel the right to pay you back in the same coin:
can you tell me how much this video you just posted is more useful than my topics?
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I only see you playing with songs, equalizer, google chrome etc. It is so that you determine if an ISO is working?
Then, I am afraid we have a different point of views because I check different things.
Just to mention one is the integrity violations which is just one I previously recommended you to check, but you have not even taken the time to read and have taken this as a personal offence.

Sometime ago you came into my topics and posted off topic links in the intent of sharing and I let you do. We soon realized the troubles you was facing.
Now you have done the same with just minor changes and posted again in my new (and cleaned) topic and although it was again an off topic I just told you to wait a moment, take care and discuss with me on flaws I saw in your statements privately and work together for the benefits of community, but, again, you have taken this as personal offence.

You're seeing me as a competitor, as a threat, as someone who wants to steal the primary role you gained in this forum when all I wanted to do was working together with you for more benefits for the community.
If you feel the right to treat me in this way just because you're a long time user and winterstorm gave you some admin rights in this forum moreover recurring to red votes instead of telling me clearly and face to face what are your problems with me, than I am afraid you targeted the wrong person and I will not allow you to do this.
You let me believe that Victor123 was the responsible for the red votes and immediately after he demonstrated his innocence you continued with the same dirty tricks. You really think to destroy my reputation in this way when people will read all of this?
If you says that my topics are useless, then discuss with me as an adult and show me what I am doing wrong instead of just putting down red votes on them. I always ask in all of my topic people to correct my mistakes and I am glad if you can do the same because I don't see you as a competitor. More mistakes you can find more I happy because this will bring benefits to the community.

Winterstorm, I had faults against you and asked to accept my apologies and I have reasons to think that all has been cleared between us. I realized this immediately in your response where you clearly demonstrated to be an intelligent person that do not fall into useless polemics.
But you see what's happening here with this person and I demostrated his behaviour. It is not something happened right yesterday. He was targeting me from more time and basically when he started to wrongly believe that I want to compete with him despite I clearly demostrated all I wanted to do is to cooperate with him. It is from some time that he started to ignore me. I initially believed it was pure coincidence, but now it is clearly not the case.
I don't know why he is so susceptible. When I gently explain him concerns and what I believe could be flaws in his findings, he takes these as treats and attempts to invalidate his work and dominance in this forum.
I can't be blamed if I decide to go away. I'm sure you understand.

Thanks to all

I undrestood that i was spamming your post.,so in the future i am not going to spam your posts
Iwha t I posted was a working way to update cumulative updates without doing a full winreducing 
and  afterwards  how to clean  WinSxS.
Your working method is not working, mine is
icy