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NightOwl

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Re: cloning vista
Reply #15 - May 4^th, 2009 at 9:50am

@

fre

and

@

Brian

I'm not a *Vista* guy--so can't say I fully understand how it differs from WinXP, but...

Quote:

Firstly, I chosen to hide the original partition (so no influence to the other partition is possible). But then, BSOD were appearing at booting the clone.

Does Vista use a *boot.ini* still? Do you have to edit it to point to *partition 2* instead of *partition 1* once you have created the second instance of Vista on a different primary partition?

Or, do you have to edit the boot information using *bcdedit* to point to the 2nd partition?

Brian, how do you handle that when you make your copies?

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fre

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Re: cloning vista
Reply #16 - May 4^th, 2009 at 2:57pm

Hi NightOwl,

Vista does no longer uses the boot.ini file to boot, like xp does. Instead, there is the BCD store.
I've learned on the multibooters.co.uk website you have to modify the BCD file (via bcdedit /set ...) to generalize the Vista-install before cloning. (see my posts above)
But on this forum, I read that this modification is no longer needed when using BootIt NG when cloning a vista install.
I hope Brian - or somebody else - can give me more instructions for successful cloning a vista install...

Kind regards,
Fre

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Brian

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Re: cloning vista
Reply #17 - May 4^th, 2009 at 3:58pm

NightOwl,

TeraByte has an an interesting way to "neutralize" the boot.ini issue. Re-order the partition table. Say the first WinXP is partition(1) in boot.ini. After you clone that partition to unallocated space, you setup a boot item for that partition so it is in the first slot of the partition table. And any subsequent WinXP copies. All will have a partition(1) boot.ini. The partition table changes for each OS.

With all OS, TeraByte recommend having the active partition in the first slot of the partition table. Win98, WinXP, Vista, Win7, DOS, Linux. It just works.

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Re: cloning vista
Reply #18 - May 4^th, 2009 at 4:36pm

fre,

This is how I did it, following TeraByte's videos. I don't know if it makes a difference from what you have done so far. Also, I haven't done this exercise in a Virtual Machine although I do have a Virtual Machine with BING installed and multiple OS in the BING menu. Vista/Win7 runs at about one fifth the speed in my Virtual Machine so I don't use it from there.

OK, starting from a HD with WinXP and a data partition as well as plenty of unallocated space.

Install BING using defaults and use the installed BING for all partitioning and boot procedures. I'm using Limited Primaries here
delete WinXP as we will eventually have too many partitions
create a 16000 MB partition, NTFS, name it Vista1
setup a boot item with Vista1 in the first MBR slot, Data in the second slot
attempt to boot Vista1 from the Boot Menu. This makes Vista1 the active partition in the MBR. It won't boot of course as there is no OS and you get a message to insert the installation CD/DVD and press ctr-alt-del to restart
install Vista
make sure it boots correctly
Edit:... Reactivate BING. See Reply #20
in BING, copy Vista1 to unallocated space. Rename the copied Vista to Vista2
go to Boot Edit and click Add
setup a boot item for Vista2. Edit so the MBR details look like this

       Vista2
Hide Vista1
   Data
      BING

In the Boot Menu, click Edit for Vista1. Edit so the MBR details look like this

       Vista1
Hide Vista2
      Data
       BING

Now try booting Vista2 for the first time.

Good luck. I hope I haven't omitted any steps.

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Re: cloning vista
Reply #19 - May 4^th, 2009 at 5:34pm

NightOwl,

I'm impressed by Win7. It runs as fast as WinXP on my main computer. Vista was a slug and I didn't spend much time with it.

My test computer is a Pentium 4 1.3 GHz, 384 MB RAM and a 32 MB Video card. Microsoft doesn't recommend Win7 on a computer with these specs. Win7 installs on that machine (even in a 8 GB partition) and runs reasonably well even though it gets a Performance Score of 1 out of 8. It's not much slower than WinXP on that machine. If you have any spare time, (maybe you don't) try it. Microsoft is trying hard to rebuild its OS reputation by allowing free downloads.

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	Re: cloning vista Reply #20 - May 4^th, 2009 at 7:56pm fre, I did omit one step. Vista installs its own MBR and inactivates BING. After you have confirmed Vista1 is working OK, boot from the BING CD and Reactivate BING. This installs BING's MBR.
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	Re: cloning vista Reply #21 - May 5^th, 2009 at 5:24am I just did the exercise in a Virtual machine using WinXP. No problems.
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	Re: cloning vista Reply #22 - May 5^th, 2009 at 2:17pm I followed the procedure as described in post #18. I keep on having the same problem: when booting vista2, there is the well know vista progress bar for a couple of seconds, then a nice BSOD appears, followed by a reboot. I will now try the same procedure, but for an XP install, and see what that gives.
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Re: cloning vista
Reply #23 - May 5^th, 2009 at 3:19pm

I've done the same exercise, but this time with an XP install. And I've reached a successfull clone! I followed the instructions in post #18, except for the fact I installed XP instead of Vista. I have two separate XP installations now, and I only did one install and copied/cloned this install to unallocated space with BING, and it works fine.

Brian, - or anybody else - I would appreciate it if you could do a vista install in a virtual environment and try to clone that install with Bing and share with us the result (did it work or not?) of this experiment...

Kind regards,
Fre

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	Re: cloning vista Reply #24 - May 5^th, 2009 at 3:45pm Fre, I'm pleased WinXP worked. Sounds like there is something weird with Vista. I use Microsoft Virtual PC. Would you like me to try the Vista exercise with that software? I know you are using VMWare.
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	Re: cloning vista Reply #25 - May 5^th, 2009 at 7:11pm Fre, I just did the Vista exercise in Microsoft Virtual PC. No problems. Disk Management looks fine. You owe me a beer.
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Re: cloning vista
Reply #26 - May 6^th, 2009 at 3:57pm

@ Brian
whenever I meet you, I'll buy you a couple of beers.

Anyway, I've tried the same procedure as in post #18 but this time with Microsoft Virtual PC. Unfortunatly, I keep on having the same problem as decribed in my first posts.
There must be something with my vista-install that differs from other vista-installs (which do not have problems being cloned)
I'll keep on experimenting, and whenever I found the reason (and hopefully a solution) for my problems, I post them here.
Anyway Brian, thank you for your time/support/patience.

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	Re: cloning vista Reply #27 - May 6^th, 2009 at 4:42pm Fre, It's been fun doing these tests. Please let us know when you have further information. It's really annoying when a procedure works on one computer and not another.
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	Re: cloning vista Reply #28 - May 6^th, 2009 at 5:05pm Fre, I suggest asking your question in the TeraByte BootIt newsgroup.
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fre

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Re: cloning vista
Reply #29 - May 13^th, 2009 at 2:28pm

I continued testing in vmware, and I have found a way to boot the cloned vista install...

What I've done:
- install vista on partition 1
- using bootIt (without installing the bootmanager) I copy partition 1 (= MBR entry 0) to unallocated space. This results in a second MBR entry: MBR entry 1.
- using bootIt in partition work, I click 'View MBR' and there, I select 'MBR entry 1' and press 'Move Up' and set it to active.
When I reboot the machine, I'm really booting the cloned vista. So I do not have the problems or strange behaviour as I described in my first posts.

When I install the bootmanger (bootIt), it does not do the job for me (which is booting correctly the cloned partition), but when I manually change the options (change the order in MBR + set active as described above) I can successfully boot the clone (= MBR entry 1)

So my reflections .... (this only applies on what I've experienced on my computer with my vista, so I do not want to generalize this to other vista installs or computers):
- the BCD store of the active partition will always be loaded at booting, but it does not always load the vista install of that active partion. Any bootmanagers I tried (XOSL and BootIt) will always load the vista install on the first MBR entry it sees.
- when I change the MBR entry order (using BootIt) and put the vista install (that I want to load) on top of the list in the MBR + set to active, it does boot that (cloned) vista-install as I want/expect.

I'm now looking for a bootmanager that does this job for me.

PS: I did not change anything to the BCD store file (like bcdedit /set {etcetera} ...)

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