Reimage.com Experiences

[geekhelp4u]

I had a weeks trial of the service.
I ran thier process on about 8 PCs.
4 out of the 8 failed outright. Of the 4 which were successful, 2 of them took well over an hour. I was left thinking that I would have been better doing a repair install.
I agree with the comment that we are responsible for what is done on the client's PC. Just letting Reimage 'loose' to shake thier magic beans on my clients machine is maybe not a great idea. More detailed info is needed from Reimage. We are techs, not end-users.
I have a feeling that Reimage are most definately in Beta testing stage. Things arent working: I got phone calls from their tech saying thier servers were down and then that they were upgrading thier code etc etc.
The service could be useful in some cases as a kind of 'dial-a-fix' type fix, but after 8 uses I'm still unsure. Its certainly not worth $10 a go to me. Nor could I commit $150 a month for this serivce. If it was cheaper, I would consider trying it out for a month to get a better feel for what its doing and where it might be useful..

I have to agree with you 100%!!! What does it do exactly? When is it worth using? Of the 3 machines I tried it on here are my results...

Machine1: I already fixed the machine and then tested it on it... it said there were errors (did not say what the were) and fixed them! As far as I know, it did not do a thing!

Machine2: Tried it on a machine that would not connect using IE... as far as I could tell... all it did was reinstall IE or reset it to factory conditions...

Machine3: This time I tested it on a machine that had a fresh format and windows clean install.. Only other thing loaded was the drivers. It said that it had so many errors that it could not even run. I tried the boot option, and again go the same results. And this is a fresh windows install!

Unless I know

1) what the product does
2) what the errors it sees are, and I can see that it is worth my time and money allowing reimage to correct these errors
3) i see that the corrections are automatic, and less trouble than me doing it manually
and most important...
4) The seriously reduce the price!

I find that reimage is a waste of time, effort, and money!

 

[Wheelie]

http://www.youtube.com/v/CGEnKh0ocb0&hl=en&fs=1

 

[dipper]

I ran it for the first time today. It didn't fix the problem - I didn't expect it though.

I did though have problems with it running. I then upgraded to IE7 and it then worked fine.

 

[stevenamills]

I signed up for the trial period and it expired before I used it.

FWIW I think they might be better off giving a 2 or 3 use trial, rather than time limits.

I must admit I have serious problem getting involved with any "pay per use software". I'm just a small shaop and much prefer a single charge,

Steve

 

[rsavoia]

I know this is an older thread but I didn't want to start a whole new one on the same subject.

I interviewed Zak Dechovich, the creator and CEO of Reimage for The Force Field podcast. I let the show go a little long because I had a lot of questions and wanted to cover every aspect I could think of. I think he is on to something here and we are experiencing the beginning of a new trend in PC diagnosis and repair tools.

The Force Field Episode 26 - Reimage

What we are experiencing now are the early days of this type of technology with fits and starts that go with anything new. Usually new technologies are full of glitches but they iron out as they are refined. Nothing is perfect, but if this sort of concept continues to be developed, we could easily find ourselves automating a lot of these diagnostics and repairs in time.

I tried to think of questions that we as techs would typically ask if the CEO was in the forums and details about it that I personally wanted to know, not just the what is it and what does it do stuff. I like know how it works, what its limitations are and how it will benefit my business.

If anyone wants me to check out or interview a specific person or company on something feel free to tell me what you would want me to ask them. In the future I would like to schedule interviews and then ask you to post questions that you would like to ask. I think this would add more depth to the discussions.

 

[ReArtemis]

Tried reimage on four pc's, ranging from OS errors to non-starters. Unfortunately none were repaired by reimage. What it did mean though was that i lost a couple of hours working time on these machines by waiting for the process to finish then checking to see if the process had altered anything that might need reversing.

I know the website says it can all be undone by running a scan again but i think i got scared with not being in control of the repair especially seeing as though it hadn't worked.

It felt like i had handed my car keys to the kid next door!

 

[Wheelie]

... It felt like i had handed my car keys to the kid next door!

I watched the entire video of the Force Field interview with Dechovich last week. After listening to all the steps required to run and fix a computer using Reimage I honestly think I could do a data backup and Windows reload in the same amount of time.

Advantages of doing a backup and reload over Reimage:
1) I know what I did to repair it
2) I don't have to pay anyone to fix computers
3) I know it will run better on a reload
4) I don't have the risk of what happened in your experience (wasted time)
5) I make more money

 

[jaharris72]

It seems like a wonderful software but I have serious security concerns. I did not listen to the program. My question is who is doing this work the software or a person. All I know I do not know what inforamtion is being transmitted to the company. That is all I need to find out that a customers data is on the Internet. This is my personal feeling.

 

[Wheelie]

Excellent point. I didn't think of that aspect.

 

[ootuoyetahi]

I havent really had great results with reimage.com. I ran in on two different machines. The first computer took ~ three passes to complete the analysis and fix. It kept freezing before it would finish, thus taking three times as long as it should have. After that I ran it on the second PC after I had gone through it and cleaned it up to see if it would identify anything i missed. My opinion is that it is quite expensive and I found it frustrating that it was freezing midway. I could have fixed it quicker manually.

 

[Nextora]

My Reimage Experience

After hearing about Reimage on Technibble & the Force Field Podcast I was intrigued enough to give it a try. Like most other technicians I had some reservations about how it is licensed and the whole concept of an “automated repair” but figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try. Today I finally had the opportunity put Reimage to the test. I had a computer in my shop that was a teenage girl’s computer that was “looping” at boot up. The computer would get to the XP Logo with the progress bar and then restart. It would do this over and over in a continuous loop. To me this seemed like a good candidate for my reimage test. Not knowing about the free three day trial through Technibble I signed up for the $79 – 3 Repairs package. At $26.33 per use that is really pricey but I just wasn’t ready to commit to the $199 – 20 Repairs package and again I didn’t know about the free trial. Bummer.

Since this computer wouldn’t boot I needed to download the Boot CD creator from their site. Once downloaded, the Boot CD Creator informed me that I needed a XP CD so it could create the Boot CD. So I got an XP CD put it in the drive and was expecting it to take about 15 minutes to create the Bootable CD, unfortunately it took well over an hour to create the bootable ISO. I burned the ISO to a CD and was finally ready to give reimage a try. I turned on the broken computer, popped the CD in the drive and it actually booted into what looked like a Bart’s PE environment. Just as I started to think I was in the clear I got two error messages on the screen:

1. Error - Unable to start “DHCP Client” service.
2. XPELogon - Main shell died with code 0x1 before starting (GetLastError()==1440), there are some problems….I’ll start command prompt now.

At this point it was about 6PM and I decided to call it a day. I was definitely disappointed with the service and figured I would give a call to tech support the next day when I had some time. The next day I browsed over to the site and looked for the tech support number but wasn’t able to find one. I quickly realized that they don’t offer phone support, or if they do I couldn’t find it. So I emailed support with my problem and they replied back in less than 10 minutes. They informed me that my boot CD was corrupt and gave me a link to download a Boot CD from their site. So I downloaded it and burned it to a CD and tried the whole process over again.

This time the computer actually booted up from the CD without issue and was able to connect to the Reimage site where I began the fixing process. Right as it started I got yet another error message. This time the error was coming from reimage site not the OS. It informed me that the computer could not be fixed because it had insufficient RAM and virtual RAM. This computer has 512MB of ram, a little low by today’s standards but reimage should definitely not give an error. I decided to give it another try by clicking the “Fix” button again, this time it got the same error. I tried it one last time, and got a message stating that the computer had a low amount of RAM available but reimage could still fix the problems but it would take longer than normal. Now apparently I used the new version because I was told exactly what it was going to fix and I had the option of fixing or not fixing what I wanted. I reviewed everything that it was going to fix and it all looked fine to me. And just 32 minutes later I had a message on the screen letting me know that the computer has been fixed and is ready to be rebooted.

So it is finally the moment of truth….Will the computer that was previously “looping” actually boot into Windows? YES, it booted into Windows and I was presented with a window that informed me what services it disabled and I had the option of re-enabling these services. Since all of the services it disabled were for my remote software, Bomgar (Similar to WebEx) I re-enabled them. It rebooted one last time and the computer now appeared to be working normally. I now ran the typical CCleaner, SmitFraudFix, AVG Scan and Windows Update. The computer is now running perfectly.

Overall my first experience with Reimage was mediocre at best, a solid C. I see a lot of potential in products like Reimage and think we will be seeing more “automated repair” software in the future. I would be more open to Reimage if it were licensed traditionally as opposed to the SaaS model. In order for me to continue to use Reimage I will need to know that it is going to save my business money. If I am paying $10 per license I need to know that Reimage will save my business at least $10 dollars in labor cost while still maintaining the same quality that my customers expect. I will definitely keep Reimage in my toolbox and give it a try again when another “good candidate” comes along.

 

[BioSpark]

Nice review, Nex. I was looking over the forums, and did a search on reimage. It looked pretty neat, but after your review, I think I'll trust my screw driver and flash light (Ooo, and USB drive).

 

[Wheelie]

... At $26.33 per use that is really pricey but I just wasn’t ready to commit to the $199 – 20 Repairs package ...

... Overall my first experience with Reimage was mediocre at best, a solid C ... In order for me to continue to use Reimage I will need to know that it is going to save my business money. If I am paying $10 per license I need to know that Reimage will save my business at least $10 dollars in labor cost while still maintaining the same quality that my customers expect ...

I agree. The company needs to do a little better job demostrating how reimage will either:

1. Save me money, or
2. Increase my revenues

So far I have not seen that it offers any benefits. I hate being so harsh toward this product. Right now I'll just keep my $200 and keep on doing what I'm doing. Someone help me out here if I am off base.

 

[Nextora]

Nice review, Nex. I was looking over the forums, and did a search on reimage. It looked pretty neat, but after your review, I think I'll trust my screw driver and flash light (Ooo, and USB drive).

I would definitely recommend giving it a try with the free trial. Although my first experience wasn't the best I still have hope for this product. You should give it a try and post your experience.

 

[Wheelie]

I would definitely recommend giving it a try with the free trial. Although my first experience wasn't the best I still have hope for this product. You should give it a try and post your experience.

What do you see are the benefits of this product? From comments posted in this thread I've read it is taking as long to do a repair with it as it would take to simply backup data and reload Windows. If that's true - what benefit(s) would this product have?

 

[Reimage_Support]

Dispeling Reimage myths

What do you see are the benefits of this product? From comments posted in this thread I've read it is taking as long to do a repair with it as it would take to simply backup data and reload Windows. If that's true - what benefit(s) would this product have?

Dear Wheelie,

You make a valid point: why indeed make a purchase when the benefits, as articulated in this forum show that the run time is long?

I would like to dispel a few common myths that have emerged:

1. Time of repair - Reimage does not take long to run, the average run time is about 22 - 34 minutes.
2. BootCD - we realized many technicians lacked a quality, standard, bootCD, so we created one. This is not actually an integral part of the Reimage service, but rather a contribution to the PC repair community. Setting up the bootCD takes some time, it's true, but that is a one off process.
3. Reporting - Reimage offers a detailed repair plan (in our latest versions) and allows the user full control over disabled programs and a clear breakdown of the repair process.
4. Development - We think very highly of our users opinions, any comment, thought or query you may have you can address to me directly nico at reimage.com, regarding technical questions you have support at reimage.com.
5. Pricing - we thought it would be fair to offer multiple repairs to technicians at a sum that equates a single repair session with a customer.
6. All in one solution - Reimage aims to be provide a one click PC repair solution, besides our ongoing R&D we have recently integrated an Anti-Virus into the online tool to clean up the files we isolated.
7. Full technical disclosure - we can't disclose all that we do (we do have 4 patents pending right now), but in a nutshell: we download an ActiveX that has about 200,000 lines of code in it, the ActiveX scans the machine, analyzes what is missing, what shouldn't be there, and what software is clashing. It does this by comparing it to about 10 million objects in our servers and brings in "spare parts" to finish the repair. What is missing has now been filled in, what shouldn't be there has been isolated and clashes are resolved based on our learning curve of having repaired about 30,000 PCs to date.
8. Success rate - Reimage started out with Technibble a while back, we are happy to say that product is now significantly better and our support calls have significantly declined over the past few months.
9. Guaranteed value for money - Reimage has an UNDO function that works perfectly, if you're not happy with the repair you can UNDO it as the click of a button (we won't charge for that repair). If you're working on a machine off-site you just click on the start repair button and do something else in the interim (maybe fix some hardware problems on another PC). It's a hands off process, thus, by default, one never "wastes time" running Reimage.
10. Privacy - Reimage does not store, keep, or touch user data. We have thorough and comprehensive legal documents in the website that attest to this.

I hope this post will help to better understand how and what we are doing with Reimage.com.

Please do not hesitate to contact me regarding all non-technical issues, we truly appreciate your feedback and interest in Reimage.com.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Black,
Marketing Director
nico at reimage.com

 

[basic]

I noticed the big freaking advertisement on one of Bryce's latest posts and decided to go to the site and find out what it's all about. I watched the video and read some stuff on their site and I have to say that I am turned off by the "it just works" explanation.

If the issues I've read in this thread are resolved or mitigated I could see some potential uses for the service. However, I could never picture this as being my first line of defense in fixing a computer. After fixing the major issues, myself, I might use this product to do the clean up work to finish out a unit. I honestly don't think this product would save me that much time. (I can Google pretty fast)

Overall, it's a good concept but I think the price is a bit prohibitive. The fact that the fee to use the product could, depending on the package purchased, be a large portion of what they collect from the customer will turn off technicians from using this product. It would be the whole time vs. money issue and I think Reimage is on the side where the potential time saved would not justify the money technicians would "lose".

The other thing is...let's hypothetically say Reimage becomes the end all be all tool and works flawlessly and fixes everything, minus hardware related issues. What does the technician become at that point? You won't grow and gain experience. You won't develop skills that you can carry on and get a job elsewhere. Technicians basically become button pushers. I realize this is a slippery slope of an argument...but one of the joys of those who are technicians is figuring out problems and fixing it. It's the satisfaction we get when we do this that makes us enjoy our jobs. It's in our blood to be problem solvers.

I think this product is being marketed to the wrong people, as stated in a previous post. We pay for this service but, no matter what the product does, we are liable for the outcome and we are the ones that would have to deal with the customer if something goes wrong. I kind of don't like that. Of course everything I've said is just an opinion. So take it with a grain of salt.

 

[william_schubert]

Continuing experiances with Reimage

I've a number of comments already posted regarding Reimage some good, some bad. In general I find it to be a tool that has not yet reached its potential but is being improved daily. They are very responsive to feedback. Here's my latest positive experience:

Had a client bring in his laptop on which we had installed AVG about a year earlier. The AVG would no longer update. After attempting a reload and various forms of updating the AVG with no success I was convinced that it was the operating system that was corrupt. No virus agents to be found so it was just a case of dll's and other files not doing what they were supposed to do. A likely candidate for complete reload.
So I attempted to use the Reimage boot disk (new version which is a great improvement) but it failed to load. I booted to safe mode and ran Reimage that way. And it worked perfectly. So saved my customer $100 plus dollars and returned the laptop to him with his programs intact and he was MUCH happier.

 

[Wheelie]

Couldn't you have simply reloaded AVG?

and charged an hour labor?

 

[stevenamills]

Reviving this thread rather starting a new one.

I had tried this earlier with limited success. Last week I thought I had a perfect situation. I bought the 3 repair package for $79 - assured by the satisfaction guarantee - that's a mistake.

I first connscted with Reimage and downloaded the control and got a flash and an empty white box. I let it sit for a couple of hours and decided to try the boot disk.

I created the boot disk per instruction and it persisted in crapping out with some strange cmd error. Incredibly, they wash their hands of the disk and it is an "unsupported" feature.

I write them again (I never heard from them the 1st time) and said I wanted a refund. I was crammed into the bowels of their CRM and still have no resoluition or refund.

Their CC processor is equally lame.

I understand technology not working, but this kind of service is absurd.

Now I have to go through the pain of filing a fraud report with my CC company.

Just a consideration for others looking at the product.