EWF-RamReg-Solution and GHOST

[Guest]

Hi Guys

Usually putting a XPE golden image to a new target disk via a cloning tool (I have tested with Ghost 2003, Ghost 7.5 Enterprise, Acronis True Image7 and Drive Image) needs a reboot till EWF works (New hardware found because of the different disk).
One of our customers uses Ghost 7.5 Enterprise. They installed first a Ghost-Startup-Partition on the target disk. Then they installed the golden image via this startup oartition. And this time it was different..
It was impossible to enable EWF anymore. ewfmgr c: -enable ended up with error 1. The problem could only be soluted by terminating the ghost startup partition and reinstalling the golden image

The customer is a little upset now. Any ideas to mahe ewf more stabile or to change something on the ghost-side

Regards
Grabher Guenter

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Do you want to say that reg ram ewf solution wont work after cloning?
This would be really strange, since reg ram ewf is very ignorant of software
and hardware changes (I'm saying that it must work).

Also probably you can skip the ghost part completely if you can somehow copy
files to your destination disk.

Regards,
Slobodan

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Hi Guys,

Usually putting a XPE golden image to a new target disk via a cloning tool

(I have tested with Ghost 2003, Ghost 7.5 Enterprise, Acronis True Image7
and Drive Image) needs a reboot till EWF works (New hardware found because
of the different disk).

One of our customers uses Ghost 7.5 Enterprise. They installed first a

Ghost-Startup-Partition on the target disk. Then they installed the golden
image via this startup oartition. And this time it was different...

It was impossible to enable EWF anymore. ewfmgr c: -enable ended up with

error 1. The problem could only be soluted by terminating the ghost startup
partition and reinstalling the golden image.

The customer is a little upset now. Any ideas to mahe ewf more stabile or

to change something on the ghost-side?

 

[Guest]

Hi Slobodan

-> Do you want to say that reg ram ewf solution wont work after cloning
-> This would be really strange, since reg ram ewf is very ignorant of softwar
-> and hardware changes (I'm saying that it must work)
I never had problems before, mainly because the elimination of the eumel-45h-partition made things more easy
The fact that ewf only gets active on a new hardware target after reboot is nice, because otherwise one must deal wit
ewfmgr c: - commit in order to commit the hardware changes to the system
In order to make the golden image work when ghost resides in the startup partition it changes somthing (no idea what
in the MBR or the system partiton. In my opinon this is the reason of the problem

-> Also probably you can skip the ghost part completely if you can somehow cop
-> files to your destination disk
The customer is not willing to skip the gost partition, because the whole organisation with alle their pc-controlle
machines uses this cloning system which i must confess, is very effective in case of a desaster

Regards
Günte

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Hi Guys

(I have tested with Ghost 2003, Ghost 7.5 Enterprise, Acronis True Image
and Drive Image) needs a reboot till EWF works (New hardware found becaus
of the different disk)

One of our customers uses Ghost 7.5 Enterprise. They installed first

Ghost-Startup-Partition on the target disk. Then they installed the golde
image via this startup oartition. And this time it was different..

It was impossible to enable EWF anymore. ewfmgr c: -enable ended up wit

error 1. The problem could only be soluted by terminating the ghost startu
partition and reinstalling the golden image

 

[Doug Hoeffel]

Grabher:

When trying to deploy with this new ghost partition are you by chance adding
a 4th partition? What I'm getting at here is that maybe the EWF partition
cannot get created because you can only have 4 primary partitions, and the
ghost partition adds the 4th which keeps the EWF partition from being
created properly?

--
HTH... Doug
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Hi Slobodan,

-> Do you want to say that reg ram ewf solution wont work after cloning?
-> This would be really strange, since reg ram ewf is very ignorant of software
-> and hardware changes (I'm saying that it must work).
I never had problems before, mainly because the elimination of the

eumel-45h-partition made things more easy.

The fact that ewf only gets active on a new hardware target after

reboot is nice, because otherwise one must deal with

ewfmgr c: - commit in order to commit the hardware changes to the system.
In order to make the golden image work when ghost resides in the

startup partition it changes somthing (no idea what)

in the MBR or the system partiton. In my opinon this is the reason of the problem.

-> Also probably you can skip the ghost part completely if you can somehow copy
-> files to your destination disk.
The customer is not willing to skip the gost partition, because the

whole organisation with alle their pc-controlled

machines uses this cloning system which i must confess, is very

effective in case of a desaster.

 

[Grabher Günter]

Hi Doug,

No, our golden image usually has a 512MB system partition
(07,Primary,NTFS,Active) and a 128MB data partition (07,Primary,NTFS). This
15MB ghost service partition (FAT) is the 3rd one and is installed first on
an empty CF which identifys itself as a fixed disk.

Regards,
Günter

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

I'm lost you and original problem.

Are you using or have read my doc?
http://www.xpefiles.com/a_file.cfm?custid=Components&fileid=ramewf.zip&group
Name=Other

If partition ARC name is correct in registry RAM EWF will work (It never
failed me on any medium removable or fixed).

Regards,
Slobodan

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Microsoft!
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Hi Slobodan,

-> Do you want to say that reg ram ewf solution wont work after cloning?
-> This would be really strange, since reg ram ewf is very ignorant of software
-> and hardware changes (I'm saying that it must work).
I never had problems before, mainly because the elimination of the

eumel-45h-partition made things more easy.

The fact that ewf only gets active on a new hardware target after

reboot is nice, because otherwise one must deal with

ewfmgr c: - commit in order to commit the hardware changes to the system.
In order to make the golden image work when ghost resides in the

startup partition it changes somthing (no idea what)

in the MBR or the system partiton. In my opinon this is the reason of the problem.

-> Also probably you can skip the ghost part completely if you can somehow copy
-> files to your destination disk.
The customer is not willing to skip the gost partition, because the

whole organisation with alle their pc-controlled

machines uses this cloning system which i must confess, is very

effective in case of a desaster.

 

[Grabher Günter]

Hi Slobodan,

I must confess, I was only USING the RAMEWF.sld - component and the ewfmgr
commands. It worked too good to even think about it.

If the customer installs a GHOST startup partition first, and then the
golden image then ArcName changes from multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)
to multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2). No wonder that i got the message
"Failed getting protected volume configuration with error 1." on ewfmgr c: .

Thank you very much Slobodan.

Regards,
Günter

P.S.:
Theres a new ewf hotfix around. "Enhanced Write Filter Unable to Copy Large
Amounts of Data to Protected Drive" - Looks like it is necessary to create
a new RAMEWF - component with the help of your "How to install RAM EWF
without temporary partition"-dokument based on Q832662, doesn't it?

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

I'm glad that I was able to help you

Theres a new ewf hotfix around. "Enhanced Write Filter Unable to Copy Large
Amounts of Data to Protected Drive" - Looks like it is necessary to create
a new RAMEWF - component with the help of your "How to install RAM EWF
without temporary partition"-dokument based on Q832662, doesn't it?

I saw this fortunately it addresses issues with ewfntldr. and this ntdlr
file should not be used with RAM EWF scenarios. So this fix is unrelated to
RAM EWF and there is no need to make new component.

I hope that this help you.

Regards,
Slobodan

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[Grabher Günter]

Thanks, you kept a lot of pain away from me )

Regards,
Günter