[Help Capturing XP Images with VMware & Redploying with ImageX]

Upon further investigation I realised that the local C drive does not contain boot.ini, ntdetect.com or ntldr

I have a feeling that its probably something to do with the manufacturers diagnostic partitions which have been captured along the way!

Is there something 'schoolboy' I have missed out here?

If you get the message you posted you do have *somewhere* a NTLDR+NTDETECT.COM+BOOT.INI.

The contents of BOOT.INI are needed to understand if there has been *somehow* a "shift" in partition numbering (and consequently in ARCPATH).

The message could also be related to drivers (that you have installed in the VM) that are (obviously) not capable of reading/accessing the disk on the "real" machine, but that should have produced a BSOD 0x0000007b.

You might need to re-generalize the image or however check the Registry to see if the "right"drivers are installed and/or if the /MountedDevices key has remnants referring to an old disk signature or different LBA start of the partition.

Also it is possible that besides partition order also (still *somehow*) disk order has been changed.

jaclaz

This one has thrown me - but it was an experiment to save time and effort of having to find these old machines!

When I type bootcfg at a cmd prompt it says boot.ini is not present.

I think the confusion has somehow cropped up from the original presence of the Dell Diagnostic partition and therefore the numbering as you suggested.

Obviously before applying the image I ran the standard diskpart script for just one partition etc.

There wasn't a BSOD like you get when booting an ATA build with the sata operation set to AHCI, i was actually quite impressed with such a clean error message!

I wasn't booting into windows on the VM once image applied, I was doing all the work in Win7pE - If I tried to boot some of the intel based images up in VMWARE they would just bluescreen anyway.

I think tomorrow I will build a new legacy image from scratch (without diag partition) then try recapturing it through VMware

thanks for your input, much appreciated!

[Help Capturing XP Images with VMware & Redploying with ImageX]

Hello,

I am trying to recapture my legacy .gho images as.wim.

For the machines I had available I was able to apply .gho - update - sysprep - capture via wds to network & usb hd with success.

However on the unavailable machines I set up an IDE VM using Workstation 7, applied the .gho rebooted then recaptured using wds but only saving to USB HD.

As a result of this I created a 16 image wim file.

When I apply the images which I taken from the physical machines it works fine, however when I apply the images I recaptured from the VM, upon boot I get the following error message:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.

Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.

Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.

Upon further investigation I realised that the local C drive does not contain boot.ini, ntdetect.com or ntldr

I have a feeling that its probably something to do with the manufacturers diagnostic partitions which have been captured along the way!

Is there something 'schoolboy' I have missed out here?

Any help would be appreciated, before I embark on another mammoth task next week!

thanks

A

[customizing xp capture]

Have you sysprepped your XP images so they prompt you for computer name, domain join etc when after doing a normal imagex deployment?

I personally wouldn't bother with MDT for deploying XP and just deploy the images using WDS & xml answer files - check out the samples in your Windows Aik folder in program files.

[Trying to create PE environment for PXE boot]

Personally I would use WDS and PE with PXE boot.

[Make_PE3 Program to Create Portable Windows 7 PE]

Hello, slightly off topic but can anyone tell me where I can down the NT6.X fast installer.exe as referred to in pstart (USB_XP_Setup\NT6.X fast installer 091220.EXE)

I have downloaded a 7zip archive (NT6.X_fast_installer_100219.7z) but it does not contain the ...091220.exe that I need.

[Question!]

The problem I have is that not all of the machines I support are 64-bit capable, thats why I went with the two stick option.

[Question!]

What I have managed to do so far is make my usb flash drive bootable, copy the contents of 7x32-bit iso to the route - tested installing - worked ok

Created Portable Win7PE with PStart etc - renamed and copied the generated Wim file to SOURCES directory on flash drive as bootp.wim

Used EasyBCD 2 to change boot record so I get asked to install Windows 7 32-bit or run Windows 7 Portable.

I just need to add drivers to allow Portable 7 to run universally accross all our machines - I'm currently stripping the huge installer files out of my driver folder.

Separate USB Key acquired for Win 7 64-bit installer!

The next two goals of my project are to setup a customised win7 installer - following guides on here! and to try and install Windows XP from same active partition as everything else!

[Question!]

The answer is yes, but a couple things.

1. Recovery PE? like WinRE is actually just WinPE.

2. WinPE can be a custom OS, look here:

Your main problem is that you would need a 32bit WinPE to build, but then you can't install 64bit OS. Another problem (uh yeah I can't tell you how to do this) is if you don't build your boot environment properly, you may find that no PC will have enough memory to boot your custom PE.

You already received your warn about Hiren's...

1) Basically just the windows recovery tools which enable you to repair mbr etc? - cool! I assume I can do these tasks from WinPE custom OS

2) Would running WinPE as a custom OS allow me to view a local computers hard drives? - I assume so looking at the screenshots on the link provided - that would also negate the need for third party tools.

Thanks for your advice and clarification, I suppose I will have to carry a separate USB key for 7x64 installs - not the end of the world!

Just setting up test machine to run both 32-bit and 64-bit dual boot so I can start creating!

Apologies for Hiren reference, I only use it for its password and explorer tools which i should not longer need once i set up portable os.

many thanks

Andy

[Question!]

Is it possible to have a bootable USB Drive (flash or hDD) which contains and can run Windows 7 installers AND Win PE3 boot.wim files?

I've spent the past week trying to do this without success (it only seems to use the one) and would appreciate a definitive answer!

My ultimate goal would be to use my 300gb usb hdd to boot a menu which contains

1 - my winpe3 boot.wim with pstart etc

2 - xp installer

3 - windows 7/2008 installers

4 - recovery pe?

5 - live OS which can work with local pc's c drive

Many thanks

Andy