Thinkpads Forum

GomJabbar wrote:Did you put the target drive (new drive) in the ThinkPad, and the source drive in the other enclosure?

jlingo wrote:When I boot the drive afterwards, it gave me an error message that hardware has been changed and unable to boot Please insert Vista installation DVD.

BillMorrow wrote:call microsoft and complain..
or call lenovo support and complain..

or just use the restore CD's on the new drive..

An update on where things currently stand.

Indeed this appears to be a condition specific to the new BCD-based boot manager. i.e. It's the boot manager failing to find and execute the Windows boot files under circumstances where Windows itself can otherwise successfully boot, and not a change to the boot configuration/dependencies of Windows itself.

(Windows of course also keeps partition and disk information of its own, even prior to Vista. But in my experience this never resulted in a boot issue for the situation described, and Windows automatically updated and corrected if a different partition / disk signature was used.)

The cause of the Vista load failure previously described, to the degree I understand it, is that by default all of the BCD entries use "PARTITION"-type device references where applicable. In the BCD data stored for these "PARTITION"-type device references (visible in the BCD section of the registry, and in a BCDEDIT /EXPORT), both the drive signature and the partition number appear to be part of the information stored. And based on the results, both must match the current environment else the boot manager will declare the OS loading application cannot be found.

(Even if I force the drive signature to be the correct signature, if I'm restoring to a different partition than the image was previously using, the restored partition will still fail to boot because the partition number stored in the BCD still doesn't match the current environment.)

The solution that appears to be most suitable (at least for the situation I previously described and was intending to solve) is to change the BCD entries to use "BOOT" device references rather than explicit "PARTITION"-based references. Presumably thereby implying "whatever device/partition I booted from, that is the device/partition I want to use".

Preparing a Vista installation prior to creating the Ghost image then becomes a task of setting the DEVICE and OSDEVICE entries of the BCD entries you intend to use:

Logon as Administrator and from a command prompt invoke the following changes:
BCDEDIT /set {bootmgr} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} osdevice boot

Note you can "fix" a previously restored (and currently failing to boot) installation using a PE boot disc and executing these same actions against the restored partition's BCD entries.

There may be more entires that you need to fix if you intend to use them ({memtest}, {legacy}, etc.). The above is just the minimum for my own scenario where there is just a clean Vista-only OS installation on the partition.

Once the BCD entries are no longer referring to specific disk signatures and partition numbers, there is no need to use -FDSP with Ghost anymore, either. The disk signature can be reset as it is by default with a Ghost disk restore, and "nothing special" is required during image creation or restore (from a Ghost perspective).

Presumably this could have also been corrected by resetting/updating the "PARTITION"-type device entries with current information (current partition number and disk signature) post-Ghost restore, if for any reason the use of "PARTITION"-type references is needed. For the purposes of making an image that can be restored via Ghost to any partition on my test box, the "BOOT" device reference appears most desirable by not being fixed to any one partition or disk signature.

Happy booting.

-Alan

Nebzar wrote:I think this may be the simplest solution to the problem of successfully boot from a cloned disk. I don't have direct confirmation that it works, since I don't have yet tried to clone a Vista boot disk, so you may want to try and report back here.

The solution relies on changing some BCD entries to "BOOT" device references rather than explicit "PARTITION"-based references (which contain both the drive signature and the partition number, and thus become invalid for the cloned disk).

It can be accomplished by issuing, BEFORE CLONING, three BCDEDIT commands:

BCDEDIT /set {bootmgr} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} osdevice boot

Subsequently, you can clone the disk and the clone will successfully boot.

I quote here the full text of the relevant post, which is post N. 4 in the following thread:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPo ... 0&SiteID=1

Last available update: build #4942, 2007-03-12. Get update.

Changes:

* Backup creation of MS Outlook 2000 and MS Outlook 2003 imap accounts
* File level archive creation fixes
* Better hardware support
* Bootable media fixes
* Fixes for working under Windows Vista 64
* Fixes of working with FTP.
* Windows Vista restoring fixes
* Email notification fixes

Nebzar wrote:Sorry that my post came too late for you

I checked the Acronis support site, and for the last build (4942) of TrueImage 10 they report these changes:

Last available update: build #4942, 2007-03-12. Get update.

Changes:

* Backup creation of MS Outlook 2000 and MS Outlook 2003 imap accounts
* File level archive creation fixes
* Better hardware support
* Bootable media fixes
* Fixes for working under Windows Vista 64
* Fixes of working with FTP.
* Windows Vista restoring fixes
* Email notification fixes

Maybe the "Windows Vista restoring fixes" do solve the problem...

Regards

GomJabbar wrote:Did you put the target drive (new drive) in the ThinkPad, and the source drive in the other enclosure?