Custom WMC Build

[iiamsiincere]

Hello. I'm very new to Windows XP and MCE under the hood. I have imaged a few computers in the past with both, so I have a foundational understanding but there is an issue I'm encountering that I'm hoping to get help with. 

I purchased a used HTPC from the early 2000s from HP. After a few months, I was finally able to find the official Recovery Disc for it. I noticed that if I reimage the desktop with the original HDD, I get no issues. But the minute I try to use a WD Black drive or an SSD, I get a warning that the disc can't be used with that drive. 

One thing I was thinking was to dive into the files, so see if I could figure out a workaround. I opened up a few of the config/ini files with notepad++ and found some bits and pieces of information but nothing in regards to the Disc looking for the HDD ID in order to know what drive is installed. I'm sure HP did this on purpose. I can install another MCE or Windows XP installation ISO/USB with another drive, but I would like to use the recovery disc that installs all of the software associated with this specific computer. 

Would anyone know what I should look for and how I might be able to go about changing the config file so that I can image the recovery onto an SSD or at the very least a faster HDD?

My machine is the HP z557 Digital Entertainment Center but the recovery disc for any of the z500 series should be similar (some models have different GPUs but mostly all the same). I did change the RAM and CPU, so I have the feeling that the HDD is the only thing it checks for. 

[jaclaz]

It is difficult to say what (stupid) provision there might be that prevents you from restoring/recovery,

Usually it is not very sophisticated (i.,e. it doesn't interrogate the hard disk for make/model as that would be a problem in manufacturing assembling lines when a batch of different make/model disks is provided and of course there would be the need to re-create different Recovery Discs for different batches).

So, generally speaking the check is done:
1) on Disk's Signature (on the MBR)
2) on Disk's Signature AND MBR boot code
3) on some values in the MBR partition data
4) on some other "hidden" sector or partition

A test that costs little (only some time and patience) would be, since you have the original hard disk AND the recovery disc work fine on it would be to make a forensic (dd-like) clone of the old hard disk on the new hard disk (same size or bigger) and see what happens with it. I wouldn't overdo it, at least for the test, i.e. if the original hard disk is a 250 GB, one, a clone on a 250 or 320 GB disk has more chances to work than a clone on (say) a 1 TB disk.

Edited Friday at 03:35 PM by jaclaz

[iiamsiincere]

Thank you very much. would clonezilla be a preferred disk cloning software or do you suggest something specific for cloning the drive?

2 hours ago, jaclaz said:

It is difficult to say what (stupid) provision there might be that prevents you from restoring/recovery,

Usually it is not very sophisticated (i.,e. it doesn't interrogate the hard disk for make/model as that would be a problem in manufacturing assembling lines when a batch of different make/model disks is provided and of course there would be the need to re-create different Recovery Discs for different batches).

So, generally speaking the check is done:
1) on Disk's Signature (on the MBR)
2) on Disk's Signature AND MBR boot code
3) on some values in the MBR partition data
4) on some other "hidden" sector or partition

A test that costs little (only some time and patience) would be, since you have the original hard disk AND the recovery disc work fine on it would be to make a forensic (dd-like) clone of the old hard disk on the new hard disk (same size or bigger) and see what happens with it. I wouldn't overdo it, at least for the test, i.e. if the original hard disk is a 250 GB, one, a clone on a 250 or 320 GB disk has more chances to work than a clone on (say) a 1 TB disk.

 

[jaclaz]

Clonezilla - unlike what the name suggests - doesn't really make "clones",  it tries (and often - but not always - succeeds) to create a "working copy", it has internal "I know it better than you do" provisions to "adapt" the copied contents to the new disk.

Not that I am familiar with latest versions, maybe this has changed and there is the possibility to make a real 1:1 copy.

See:

I would suggest a "pure" dd (or similar), likely this (it depends on specific OS and version) might be slower, but surely it will work.

The procedure might be a little different if you are running Windows (XP or similar), what may happen is the overwriting of the Disk Signature (that instead you want to preserve/clone).

Basically, the moment a NT system finds that two connected disks have the same signature, it silently changes the signature of one of the two (and which one might be "random", so you risk changing the disk signature of the "original", for newer versions some things have changed, though:

To be on the safe side, you should first save (to fille) a dd-like copy of the first absolute sector (MBR) of the original disk.

Then connect the new disk.

Then dd directly the whole original disk to the new one.

Then disconnect the original disk and re-apply to the new disk the saved MBR.

On Windows, I would use Clonedisk:
https://labalec.fr/erwan/?page_id=42

though nice and GUI it needs however a little bit of familiarity with the available options.

Or (good ol') dd for Windows:
https://reboottools.com/programs/dd-for-windows/

Otherwise, on *any* Linux the plain dd is just fine.

[iiamsiincere]

10 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Clonezilla - unlike what the name suggests - doesn't really make "clones",  it tries (and often - but not always - succeeds) to create a "working copy", it has internal "I know it better than you do" provisions to "adapt" the copied contents to the new disk.

Not that I am familiar with latest versions, maybe this has changed and there is the possibility to make a real 1:1 copy.

See:

I would suggest a "pure" dd (or similar), likely this (it depends on specific OS and version) might be slower, but surely it will work.

The procedure might be a little different if you are running Windows (XP or similar), what may happen is the overwriting of the Disk Signature (that instead you want to preserve/clone).

Basically, the moment a NT system finds that two connected disks have the same signature, it silently changes the signature of one of the two (and which one might be "random", so you risk changing the disk signature of the "original", for newer versions some things have changed, though:

To be on the safe side, you should first save (to fille) a dd-like copy of the first absolute sector (MBR) of the original disk.

Then connect the new disk.

Then dd directly the whole original disk to the new one.

Then disconnect the original disk and re-apply to the new disk the saved MBR.

On Windows, I would use Clonedisk:
https://labalec.fr/erwan/?page_id=42

though nice and GUI it needs however a little bit of familiarity with the available options.

Or (good ol') dd for Windows:
https://reboottools.com/programs/dd-for-windows/

Otherwise, on *any* Linux the plain dd is just fine.

Thanks for that. I wanted to give you an update to where I'm at now...

In the attachment, you can see, I first tried to backup the image and kept getting an error. It's an old Maxtor SATA drive. So I'm unsure if the issue is age or the HDD temps (it was super hot when I was doing this).

Then I just F it and tried to clone it. It ran into an error, but when I went into disk management, the drive I tried cloning it to, shown as offline and the minute I made it online, it was identified the same way as the Maxtor drive. 
I put the drive into the computer and it basically loaded with zero issues. I got curious and put the system recovery disk in to see if it would stop me and it didn't. It imaged it as if it was the Maxtor drive.

So, clearly (I'm not confident it's that clear) something is in that Maxtor drive's registry that fooled the computer into thinking my replacement drive (a WD Black Velociraptor drive) was the same thing. 

I'd still like to figure out what is needed to properly get the recovery disk to see the right information as I may eventually want to upgrade to an SSD. 

I do appreciate your help on this though. You've given me the best advice so far.