Help migrating encrypted image

[caspertone2003]

Hi,

I had a notebook with W7-64, tree partitions: manufacturer (hidden), system reserved (100MB) and system (C:)

It had been encrypted with pre-boot encryption, Truecrypt 7.1a

I had a True Acronis Home 2011 image done, that is on clear as it was done with the system running (from C). But ... the truecrypt boot loader is there ...

I converted the TAH Image to VHD using Acronis.

I can mount this VHD using W7 in another machine. All information is there (the three partitions). I remove the boot to truecrypt loader (see later).

I tried to update with Visual BCD Editor the BCD, mounting in W7 the VHD file, both changing the boot loader to the win7 one as well as changing the application device to point to the "proper" place. It changes the Windows Boot Manager to \Dev\HarddiskVolume-XY (F) and the Windows 7 one and os device to \Dev\HarddiskVolume-XY+1 (G)   where XY is 81, if I redo it again it (attachment, etc) becomes another number - currently it is 93 !! Windows Boot Manager lacks App Path value, but I am unable to create that element.

If I try to boot the VHD with VirtualBox 4.+ , I does not boot, I receive a 0xc000000e error; If boot the virtual machine from a cd with windows repair, I got -after an "starting windows" message, a 0xc0000225 error.

No windows recovery.

 

I am able to boot the VHD with VirtualBox with a cd from Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows. It is xp based.

I can use a tool called "MbrFix v 1.0.0.8", that can update to a win7 type MBR (this way I removed the boot to truecrypt loader)

There is also a MBRWizard (of no help).

 

As I am unable to boot into a W7 based OS, I have not available bcdedit and/or bcdboot inside the Virtual Machine.

 

Questions:

any idea of what could I do?

Is this harddrivepartition83 of any relevance? is it a bug? is there any way to put that value that goes well?

is it possible that you prepare a winPE/BartPE plug in for Visual BCD Edit?

 

Thanks in advance,

CT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[boyans]

Hi,

1. Mount VHD 

2. Run Visual BCD Editor (in Vista and later)

3. Load BCD from VHD !!!  ( path=vhd_drive:\boot\BCD )

Now you can delete, add, change loaders as you want.

Always select the proper drive letter acording to mapped vhd partitions !

A drive letter is transformed and stored as (disk_signature + partition_offset) in BCD.

For repairing MBR, PBR on VHD you can use 

VBCD Editor - menu  -> Repair -> Repair Boot Records 

Select Vista/7 boot record, drive_vhd_letter, select MBR, confirm.

(You can use also "Sual-boot Repair" tool , runs in XP and later)

That would be all.

Hope this helps.

Bo

[caspertone2003]

Thank you for the reply, it helps to understand better your fantastic tool.

I learnt a lot about BCD with your suuuuppppppper tool!

 

It was totally novice to BCD, and it has been hard to learn about it as I did not found a good reference for that on the web, mostly different collection of recipes. EBCDE helped me to learn; perhaps it lacks some explanations in some points, and the relations of attached vhd`s and letters somewhat obscure (your hint helps here). The storage as signature+offset ... for real experts!

 

Perhaps you can advance in providing some howtos ... and I continue to think that a bartpe plugin would be highly accepted by the community!

 

I had my problem solved with a combination of several factors:

 

- your tool and a hint of how to manage ramdisks (here http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6758 ) and recovery

- removing the truecrypt boot loader (using mbrfix /drive number fixmbr /win7 - with the vhd attached)

- putting ACPI on on the VM 

 

Thanks again,

Ctone.  

[boyans]

Hi,

Good for you that you have learned about BCD and booting. 

Things are not so complicated but need some time.

My previous post was about how to make Win7 on VHD bootable for VM.

To boot  natively Win7 installed on a VHD it suffices to have a corresponding loader entry in BCD (hard disk, active partition) 

+ Win7 MBR and PBR (hard disk, active partition).

To make Visual BCD Editor run on PE two things are needed 

1. .NET 2.0

2. access to standard dialogs.

On reboot.pro you can find Winbuilder and MakePE3 and guides how to make custom PE based on Win7.

Good luck,

Bo