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[redk9258]

How to remove Windows 7 SRP during a Ghost restore using the Ghost SRD.

NOTE: If you are using Bitlocker, this is not for you.

First off, make sure you have a verified, valid backup of all partitions on the disk Windows is installed on.

Boot the PC from the Ghost 15 SRD. All work will be done from here until it is time to reboot into Windows.

To open a command prompt, click the upper left side of the Ghost GUI...

Next, type DISKPART to open the Windows Disk Partition utility. As you can see from the LIST DISK command there are two physical drives. From the LIST VOLUME command you can see how the partitions are lettered. Since we are in Win PE, the SRP was assigned letter E...

Next, just to start with a clean slate, I used the SELECT VOLUME command to select volume C. This also brings focus to the same disk. I then ran the CLEAN command. Note this does not ask for verification, so make sure you have the correct drive!  Now Disk 0 is completely blank. You can do the LIST VOLUME command again to see the SRP and C: partitions are gone...

Now type EXIT but leave the command prompt open.
Next go ahead and restore the backup of your C drive to the unallocated space...

After the restore is complete, open DISKPART again and run the LIST VOLUME command.
Here we see the letter C was assigned to the Windows partition.
Now type EXIT but leave the command prompt open.

At the command prompt, type C:\Windows\System32\BCDBOOT C:\Windows
You should get the message: Boot files sucessfully created.

Now remove the SRD and reboot.

Once in Windows, open an elevated command prompt and run the command REAGENTC /ENABLE.
This will enable the F8 boot menu Repair option.

That's it.

[Brian_K]

Red,

Thanks. This is a classic tutorial. Well done.

In your image with "Delete Drive"..... I agree with this choice but that window has always confused me and I'd expect it confuses others too. Why do we have to see a 9.67 GB partition when none exists. It is a phantom partition and I'd prefer Ghost showed there was no partition present at all. Because there isn't. It is unallocated space.

[redk9258]

I agree. It should have a slider to adjust the partition size and a button to add apartition. This should be done without having to switch back and forth when you add a partition. Just do it all in one screen. I haven't used it for a long time, but I think one of the competitions products work something like that.

[DaveH]

Thanks Red, that is a great guide and I had no idea you could fix the boot so easily from the command prompt.

Dave

[chowse]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and this is my first post.

I think this is the thread I've been looking for.

I have an 100G SSD with the both the 100M SRP and the Windows partition for Windows 7 Ultimate on it.

My only issue is that I have been using NG 15 to image ONLY the C: drive, not the SRP.

So it looks like I would just NOT delete the drive as shown in the picture with the "Delete the Drive" button circled.

Following the rest of the procedure, that would restore only my Windows drive, it would be properly aligned, the partition would fill the entire drive, it would boot, and the F8 menu would be available.

Does that sound right?

[DaveH]

I think you will still need to delete the drives as shown in the screenshot.

Those "phantom" drives seem to me that they are coming from the information contained in the image.

Note how Red used diskpart to "clean" the drive in a previous step.  The drive was empty and unallocated at that point.

The screen where Red deletes the phantom drive shows the sizes that were contained in the image. 102MB for the SRP and 9.67GB for the C drive.  The actual size of the drive at that point is 100MB larger.

You also need to restore into unallocated space in order to expand the image into that extra space.

Also note that since you have the ultimate version, you won't be able to use bitlocker without the SRP.  I'm not sure if that matters to you.

Dave

[chowse]

Thanks for the reply.

Dave never says that he has a SSD, as I do.

The "rules" are a little different for SSD's.

Before restoring the drive, it's necessary to do a secure erase to restore it to factory defaults.

That leaves the drive "clean" like diskpart would, so there' s no need to run diskpart.

Now, in my case, I have just successfully restored my SSD, and I did it a little differently.

I had the SRP, since I installed Windows before I found out that it wasn't necessary.

I blew away all the partitions with the secure erase, then used diskpart within the Ghost disk to create a new partition with an offset of 1024, which aligns it properly.

I did have problems with getting the bcdboot C:\windows command to work within Ghost, so I booted to my Win7 install disk and did it there.

So obviously, I'm up and running again, and have learned something in the effort.

Now that I only have the one partition, I can do it the easy way.

Thanks again, and I will be happy to continue the conversation if you like.

[Brian_K]

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chowse wrote:

then used diskpart within the Ghost disk to create a new partition with an offset of 1024, which aligns it properly.

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That's OK but not essential. When Ghost 15 restores an image to unallocated space, the new partition will be 2048 sector aligned (1 MB).  Even if the original partition was cylinder aligned, the Ghost 15 restored partition will be 2048 sector aligned.

[chowse]

Showing my ignorance here...

Is '2048 sector aligned' the same as my 1024 offset?

It came out right...Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes.

[redk9258]

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chowse wrote:

I did have problems with getting the bcdboot C:\windows command to work within Ghost, so I booted to my Win7 install disk and did it there.

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Did you change to the C:\Windows\System32 folder? If not, that's why it didn't work.