topic Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware in Other Norton Products

Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

jefricllc — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 01:04:24 GMT

I had a 6 year old Acer Pentium Dual Core XPsp3 machine that I was backing up with Ghost 15.0.

Unfortunately this machine died this morning, but fortunately after the nightly Ghost 15.0 backups had run.

I am now trying to restore the Ghost 15.0 backup to a new Gateway Intel Core 2 Quad desktop, but for some reason I am not having success. The "restore anywhere" option is grayed out, and when the restored partition boots, I get a half second of the Windows splash screen and then the machine reboots.

Any help, suggestions or other would be greatly appreciated.

I have another spare desktop I could try to use, but I would prefer to use this one if possible.

Thank you!

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

Brian_K — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 01:30:21 GMT

jefricllc,

What sort of HDs do you have in the old computer? IDE or SATA?

Do you have a floppy drive in the new computer?

Is the BIOS in the new computer set for AHCI?

Do you have the storage controller drivers for the new computer?

It sounds like a storage controller driver issue. I'd try a WinXP Repair Install. There are other options if it doesn't work.

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_install.htm

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

jefricllc — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 01:39:53 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply.

Both computers have SATA drives with NO floppy.

I will check the BIOS settings.

My next steps was to do a repair install, and will try that tomorrow.

I suspect there are some driver issues and have ones on a thumb drive, but I was hoping to at least get the machine to boot with the default drivers.

Any other advise is appreciated.

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

DaveH — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 04:49:27 GMT

If you have to do a repair, make sure you have a XP disk that has SP3 integrated into it. Otherwise you can end up with a mis-match of system file versions.

But I would try different BIOS settings first, try SATA, AHCI, and even IDE mode if you have it. Whatever gets you into windows so you can install the right chipset and SATA drivers.

If your getting a blue screen and it reboots to quick to read it, hit the "pause" button on the keyboard and the system will stop until you press the "enter" key.

You also might want to try booting into safe mode in case it's something else causing the problem.

Best of luck

Dave

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

redk9258 — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 05:49:21 GMT

He could also use Ghost 15 to convert to VHD and run mini setup (this strips the HAL). Then use Ghost 15 to restore the .vhd file instead of the .v2i file.

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

Brian_K — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 06:46:56 GMT

Red, you are probabably more familiar with this but I haven't found a wrong HAL to cause a reboot. It just causes a black screen. I put reboots down to wrong storage drivers.

I just installed a wrong HAL on a WinXP machine. A few seconds after power on the Win XP scrolling white dots started and then froze on a black screen with a white bar across the bottom.

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

redk9258 — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:04:10 GMT

I'm not any more familiar with it than you. I just played around with it in Virtual PC. I just wanted to remind you that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Running Mini setup seems like it might be good idea since he is restoring to different hardware.

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

Brian_K — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:08:00 GMT

Red,

I've never run mini setup. Do you have any instructions? I'd like to try it sometime.

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

DaveH — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:24:14 GMT

The mini-setup runs automatically as a function of sysprep.

You got Virtual PC already installed, try taking a small image and use ghost to convert it to a .vhd

If you boot that in virtual pc, you'll see that it's been sysprepped and on first boot it will run a mini-setup and reconfigure the hal, SATA drivers, and for some reason re-install USB and network drivers. It basically does a "restore anywhere".

What Red's getting at is that you can restore a physical drive from a vhd with Ghost, it doesn't have to be a .v2i file.

So if you do the same thing onto a real hard drive rather than boot it in VPC you have performed a restore anywhere onto dissimilar hardware. It's the same thing BESR does.

Downside is that windows will go into a 3 day grace period and prompt for activation.

Dave

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

redk9258 — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:54:21 GMT

Yeah, it bacically runs sysprep offline. There is an option to check when you convert .v2i to .vhd to run Mini-Setup.

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

Brian_K — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:30:00 GMT

Thanks for the instructions. I restored the .vhd to the same computer but I have the idea.

One thing I missed. If you were going to restore the .vhd to different hardware, how do you install storage controller drivers? If they are needed. They are the main issue as far as I can see. Once the OS has booted you can then deal with installing other hardware drivers at your leisure.

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

DaveH — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 21:53:37 GMT

Good question, I never checked that with restoring a VHD.

When I tried BESR, it took the drivers from the recovery disk. I also tried another product that called it "Machine Independant Restore" or something like that and by default it would take the ones in use or it would let you choose another one if you wanted to. But it made sense to me because if the recovery disk had the right drivers to do the image and restore then those drivers must work good enough to boot into windows and you could re-install the correct ones later.

In BESR, when your restoring the image and get close to the very end (I think at that point the image has been restored) If you look at the progress indicator it says " Re-targeting system for new hardware" then it says "updating storage drivers", "checking hal", adding necessary devices, etc

However, I don't remember watching for that when restoring a sysprepped vhd, so I'm not positive that will happen.

It would however, have to be able to go the other way, to a ATA driver because thats what VPC uses.

Dave

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

redk9258 — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 21:55:51 GMT

Wouldn't Windows supply the driver? Maybe not if it is an OEM install, huh?

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

DaveH — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:07:07 GMT

redk9258 wrote:
Wouldn't Windows supply the driver? Maybe not if it is an OEM install, huh?

I guess the main problem with drivers is doing it with XP, it's always been tough to switch between ATA and SATA, AHCI and that needs to be done before the system boots.

Heck, you used to have to put in a floppy disk and load the drivers before the setup

But maybe it does look there too, I just assumed they came off the recovery disk because thats what another product does.

Edit- I also assumed it came off the disk because of that long thread here about "please insert the recovery disk at 99%"

I thought for sure that was really a bug in restore anywhere and not a bug in windows pe.

some of the people mentioned something about it looking for drivers and it looked to me some of those restores were trying to do a restore anywhere even though it's supposed to be disabled in Ghost.

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

jefricllc — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:07:09 GMT

At long last I have resolved the issue.

0) boot a Windows XP sp3 CD on the target computer to make sure XP works on this machine

1) I had to first delete all partitions on the hard disk being restored to

2) restored the ghost backup to the new drive

3) booted to safe mode and installed the necessary drivers for the chipset of the new computer

4) removed an Intel specific registry key, as the new computer was an AMD (see: http://www.0x0000007e.com/)

5) booted to safe mode with networking - test

6) booted normal - test

7) bootee normal - rejoin to domain - test

ALL OK - i hope this helps someone else!!

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

Brian_K — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:35:05 GMT

That is great news.

The restore gave a different result this time as you could boot into Safe Mode. You couldn't do that the first time. Any idea why?

Re: Restoring Ghost 15 Backup to new / dissimilar hardware

jefricllc — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:47:32 GMT

I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect that step 1, deleting all old partitions and having ghost re-create what it needed helped.

i am very pleased that the new computer is an exact clone of the original with NO data loss.