M
Min0
There is alot of information, and misinformation, regarding clonining of
different hardware platforms. I have had "some" success with this however
there are a few issues which need to be fully understood and resolved, for
everyones benefit.
Firstly, I have created a master image that will deploy onto 3 out of 4
different hardware platforms. The platforms on which the master image Boots
/ Runs / Correclty detects and configures all devices are:
Intel 845 Chipset Motherboard based workstation
Intel 865 Chipset Motherboard based workstation
Gigabyte 8IRML Motherboard based workstation
The above three platforms can all be imaged with the one master image and
these are currently used in production. The problem platform is:
HP VL400 Vectra:
When a VL400 is imaged and subsequently rebooted, the boot process halts at
the screen advising that the machine had been shut down incorrectly,
available selections are boot into safe mode, last know good etc. None of
the options work and the machine simply becomes totally unresponsive. The
same happens if the "timeout" expires for the machine to boot normally.
I think the key as to how it might be possible to fix / understand, or just
plain give up on this is to understand which part of the boot process is
causing the problem.
Suspecting HAL incompatiblity (Mainly because I have no idea !), I manually
installed XP Pro onto the VL400 and checked for Hal compatibility with the
other Hardware Platforms, all OK there. ACPI Hal on all four machines. I
also discovered that XP inherently supports the 815 Chipset on which the
VL400 is based, not surprising given the vintage of that chipset. So, there
seems to be no obvious showstoppers.
Back to the boot up process: I've run through the logic in this and I am
guessing that the Master Boot Record is being loaded and that control is
handed to the code contained therein however I feel that the Bios / HDD
combination is unable, for some reason to locate the boot volume, and
therefor the partition boot sector, on the cloned disk and hence the
unresponsive state regardless of which option is chosen on the bootup menu
that appears.
I checked the HDD addressing scheme in the BIOS for large disk support and
found this set to DOS ? The only other available setting is "OTHER" ?? LBA ?
I dont fully understand what this means yet but I am guessing that if it set
to "DOS" then the bios can only access the first 2Gb of disk at startup ?
Not sure on this either. The Disk in the VL400 is of 20Gb capacity by the
way.
Extract of Important Information regarding Windows Boot Process:
The Master Boot Record contains the partition table and a small amount of
executable code. The executable code examines the partition table and
identifies the active (or bootable) partition. The Master Boot Record then
finds the active partition's starting location on the disk and loads an
image of its first sector, called the Boot Sector, into memory. The Master
Boot Record then transfers execution to that Boot Sector image.
It is my current opion that this is the bit that is not happening on the
VL400 Hardware/Disk combination. My next test is going to be to take the
Imaged HDD from the VL400 and test it in one of the other [Working]
platforms and see if it boots. If it does I can deduce that the problem lies
in the Bios / Disk Controller / Disk addressing mechanism ? Does anyone have
any thoughts on this or want to shoot me down.
I dont want any responses simply saying it cant be done I want to know, not
just for myself but for everyone, EXACTLY WHY it doesn't work on one
particular, apparently compatible, hardware platform ?
The other investigation I'm going to undertake in trying to get to the
bottom of this is:
Put Cloned disk from VL400 into working system as second disk and examine
partition boundaries etc. and record any other relevant information and
compare to the Disks in one of the other working cloned systems
Anyone interested in getting to the bottom of this with me ???
Min0
different hardware platforms. I have had "some" success with this however
there are a few issues which need to be fully understood and resolved, for
everyones benefit.
Firstly, I have created a master image that will deploy onto 3 out of 4
different hardware platforms. The platforms on which the master image Boots
/ Runs / Correclty detects and configures all devices are:
Intel 845 Chipset Motherboard based workstation
Intel 865 Chipset Motherboard based workstation
Gigabyte 8IRML Motherboard based workstation
The above three platforms can all be imaged with the one master image and
these are currently used in production. The problem platform is:
HP VL400 Vectra:
When a VL400 is imaged and subsequently rebooted, the boot process halts at
the screen advising that the machine had been shut down incorrectly,
available selections are boot into safe mode, last know good etc. None of
the options work and the machine simply becomes totally unresponsive. The
same happens if the "timeout" expires for the machine to boot normally.
I think the key as to how it might be possible to fix / understand, or just
plain give up on this is to understand which part of the boot process is
causing the problem.
Suspecting HAL incompatiblity (Mainly because I have no idea !), I manually
installed XP Pro onto the VL400 and checked for Hal compatibility with the
other Hardware Platforms, all OK there. ACPI Hal on all four machines. I
also discovered that XP inherently supports the 815 Chipset on which the
VL400 is based, not surprising given the vintage of that chipset. So, there
seems to be no obvious showstoppers.
Back to the boot up process: I've run through the logic in this and I am
guessing that the Master Boot Record is being loaded and that control is
handed to the code contained therein however I feel that the Bios / HDD
combination is unable, for some reason to locate the boot volume, and
therefor the partition boot sector, on the cloned disk and hence the
unresponsive state regardless of which option is chosen on the bootup menu
that appears.
I checked the HDD addressing scheme in the BIOS for large disk support and
found this set to DOS ? The only other available setting is "OTHER" ?? LBA ?
I dont fully understand what this means yet but I am guessing that if it set
to "DOS" then the bios can only access the first 2Gb of disk at startup ?
Not sure on this either. The Disk in the VL400 is of 20Gb capacity by the
way.
Extract of Important Information regarding Windows Boot Process:
The Master Boot Record contains the partition table and a small amount of
executable code. The executable code examines the partition table and
identifies the active (or bootable) partition. The Master Boot Record then
finds the active partition's starting location on the disk and loads an
image of its first sector, called the Boot Sector, into memory. The Master
Boot Record then transfers execution to that Boot Sector image.
It is my current opion that this is the bit that is not happening on the
VL400 Hardware/Disk combination. My next test is going to be to take the
Imaged HDD from the VL400 and test it in one of the other [Working]
platforms and see if it boots. If it does I can deduce that the problem lies
in the Bios / Disk Controller / Disk addressing mechanism ? Does anyone have
any thoughts on this or want to shoot me down.
I dont want any responses simply saying it cant be done I want to know, not
just for myself but for everyone, EXACTLY WHY it doesn't work on one
particular, apparently compatible, hardware platform ?
The other investigation I'm going to undertake in trying to get to the
bottom of this is:
Put Cloned disk from VL400 into working system as second disk and examine
partition boundaries etc. and record any other relevant information and
compare to the Disks in one of the other working cloned systems
Anyone interested in getting to the bottom of this with me ???
Min0