Master Image - Windows XP Professional (7.8G Image Size)
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
Min0
any of the 3 hardware platforms mentioned below ? So one can conlcude that
the information in the image is at least "written" to the disk, sector wise,
identically. So the question remains, why wont it boot in the older hardware
? It must be to do with how the bios and installing OS interact ? I still
dont know what is going on however. Again, if anyone has any ideas or
experience I would be glad to hear from you.. Maybe its easier to buy
new(er) hardware !
Min0
"Min0" <Win098&^%@pomposnet.com> wrote in message
news:u%23VAxQy...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
Shenan Stanley
Min0 wrote:
> Interestingly, the Disk Cloned in the VL 400 System Boots if
> installed into any of the 3 hardware platforms mentioned below ? So
> one can conlcude that the information in the image is at least
> "written" to the disk, sector wise, identically. So the question
> remains, why wont it boot in the older hardware ? It must be to do
> with how the bios and installing OS interact ? I still dont know what
> is going on however. Again, if anyone has any ideas or experience I
> would be glad to hear from you.. Maybe its easier to buy new(er)
> hardware !
Wait Wait...
So If I am reading this story correctly, you have made one master image (not
different) for three platforms now you wish to make it work on the fourth
(VL400 system) and it is failing and you are trying to figure out why?
Windows 2000/Windows NT and the Win9X series.. bah - easy - make an image -
apply to multiple platforms and if they supported the hardware intrinsicly -
done.. If not, add the proper drivers, make a new image off the old machine,
then you copuld apply to all the machines you had before and the new
machines 100% of the time with no issues.
Windows XP is not as forgiving as its past counterparts about
"master-images". It will not just "rebuild itself" around whatever you
install on. You have to force it by either manually removing the hardware
information section of the system registry or using sysprep to do so to
successfully have a "master-image".
If you sysprep the image or make the image after manually installing XP on
the VL400 and reapply to another VL400, does it work? (In other words, if
the image is made on a VL400 exclusively and applied to a different (but
identical) VL400, does it work?)
If I might suggest some reading you may not (or may have) known about:
http://www.gc.peachnet.edu/www/wbeck/W2KXP.htm#Master
http://unattended.sourceforge.net
Good Luck!
--
<- Shenan ->
--
Min0
specific chipset drivers. The drivers for the 815 Chipset are present
however no boot, as described. XP does support the 815 Chipset intrinsicly
so I am going down the path relating to the bit you mentioned regarding the
registry. Sysprep is configured to build the mass storage controller
database so I am still perplexed as to why IT WONT EVEN TRY TO BOOT...I'll
take a look at the references provided, thanks.
Min0
"Shenan Stanley" <news_...@hushmail.com> wrote in message
news:uZZanHRC...@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
Marcus Wolf
I did the same as you did and it works.
Step 1: Install WinXP, apply all necessary hot fixes and all other apps.
Step 2: Defrag the hdd
Step 3: Change your computer type from acpi to ACPI advanced configuration
(VERY VERY important) this makes you HAL compatible
Step 4: Change your IDE-controller to standard dual IDE-Controller
Step 5: sysprep.exe -bmsd
Step 6: sysprep.exe -clean (wait until hdd led doesn't flash any more, or
just wait 2 min.)
Step 7: sysprep -quiet -mini -reaseal => maschine will shutdown
Step 8: image hdd and distribute to other maschine
My Image actually works on HP VL 420, HP 510, 530SFF, IBM Laptops
Z30,T40,T41,R50, X31
See my sysprep.inf below
regards Marcus Wolf
;SetupMgrTag
;SYSPREP.INF for Sysprep 2.0
;
[Unattended]
UnattendMode = FullUnattended
OemSkipEula=Yes
NoWaitAfterTextMode=1
NoWaitAfterGUIMode=1
TargetPath=\winnt
Repartition=No
Unattendswitch=Yes
UpdateInstalledDrivers=Yes
WaitForReboot=No
InstallFilesPath=C:\sysprep\i386
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
OemPnPDriversPath="drivers\HP\L\510;drivers\HP\L\530;drivers\HP\S\510;driver
s\HP\S\530;drivers\HP\V\510;drivers\HP\V\530;drivers\I\T3\P;drivers\I\T3\V;d
rivers\I\T4\A;drivers\I\T4\O;drivers\I\T4\C;drivers\I\T4\L;drivers\I\T4\M;dr
ivers\I\T4\P;drivers\I\T4\V;dirvers\I\R5\A;drivers\I\R5\C;drivers\NN\C;drive
rs\NN\L\3;drivers\NN\L\Broad;drivers\NN\L\Intel;drivers\NN\L\Real;drivers\NN
\SATA;drivers\NN\V\Ati;drivers\NN\V\NVIDIA"
ExtendOEMPartition=1,nowait
[GuiUnattended]
AdminPassword="admin"
EncryptedAdminPassword=NO
AutoLogon=Yes
AutoLogonCount=1
OEMSkipRegional=1
OEMDuplicatorstring=" WinXP Basisimage 16032004"
TimeZone=110
OemSkipWelcome=1
ProfilesDir=%systemroot%\profiles\
[Sysprep]
BuildMassStorageSection=Yes
[SysprepMassStorage]
[UserData]
ProductKey=12345-12345-12345-12345-12345
FullName="bla bla"
OrgName="bla bla"
ComputerName= ; left blank, this is the only user interaction, so you
can put in the computername
[Display]
BitsPerPel=16
Xresolution=1024
YResolution=768
Vrefresh=75
[TapiLocation]
CountryCode=49
Dialing=Tone
AreaCode=0211
LongDistanceAccess="01"
[RegionalSettings]
LanguageGroup=1
Language=00000407
[data]
UseBIOSToBoot=1
UnattendedInstall=Yes
[SetupMgr]
DistFolder=C:\sysprep\i386
DistShare=windist
[Identification]
JoinDomain=domaine
MachineObjectOU=OU=XP,OU=Computers,OU=DUS,OU=Sites,DC=de,DC=group,DC=net
DomainAdmin=whatever
DomainAdminPassword=whatever
[Networking]
InstallDefaultComponents=No
[NetAdapters]
Adapter1=params.Adapter1
[params.Adapter1]
INFID=*
[NetClients]
MS_MSClient=params.MS_MSClient
[NetServices]
MS_SERVER=params.MS_SERVER
[NetProtocols]
MS_TCPIP=params.MS_TCPIP
[params.MS_TCPIP]
DNS=No
UseDomainNameDevolution=No
EnableLMHosts=Yes
AdapterSections=params.MS_TCPIP.Adapter1
[params.MS_TCPIP.Adapter1]
SpecificTo=Adapter1
DHCP=Yes
WINS=No
NetBIOSOptions=0
[Components]
msmsgs=off
msnexplr=off
OEAccess=off
media_clips=off
media_utopia=off
Accessopt=off
AutoUpdate=off
templates=off
fax=off
Clipbook=off
charmap=off
hypertrm=off
pinball=off
freecell=off
minesweeper=off
solitaire=off
spider=off
hearts=off
zonegames=off
[Shell]
DefaultThemesOff=Yes
[Branding]
BrandIEUsingUnattended=Yes
"Min0" <Win098&^%@pomposnet.com> wrote in message
news:OyMlwQSC...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
Jamy
the oldest system you will be placing the image on. Your
problem lies on backwards/forward compatibility. The
image will always be forward compatible not always
backward (assuming you have oempnpdriverpath correct).
I've used this method to replicate a single XP image
across 6000 + PCs on 15 different models. Once you have
the XP install customized remove all system specific
hardware. E.G. "Update" your ide controller to Standard
Dual Channel, Uninstall Video, NIC etc. Do not reboot
during these steps. Then Sysprep -mini. Hope this helps
FYI. Setting your IDE to Standard Dual Channel allows the
image to boot on most any system then minisetup will
reinstall the drivers if you set
UpgradeInstalledDrivers=Yes in the [Unattended] section.
Another helpful option in [Unattend] is
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
>.
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