Ghosting HP 6200, missing boot image?

[Migration User]

Afternoon.

Our company just moved from deploying new HP 6000's to HP 6200 computers when needed. I recieved the first batch of four yesterday afternoon and have been fighting a boot issue after ghosting.

I'm using a CD boot disk.

I installed a fresh Technet Windows 7 x64 Pro w/ approved company settings. Made the new ghost Image, pushing the new image to another HP 6200 using Image-to-disk (tried disk to disk too). After rebooting the computer it sits at the blinking _ prompt in the top left of the screen...

Tried using the Windows disk to repair the MBR, but the menue prompted me with an error that the disk I was trying to uese was uncompatable with the installed version.. Weird..

 

Any suggestions?

[Migration User]

1) This tool is included in WINPE boot package.

-- Boot the client machine using WINPE boot disk.

-- Quit from Ghost.

-- Change the directory to x:/Ghost on Command Prompt.

-- Type gdisk32.exe 1 /mbr where 1 specifies disk number.

2) Try changing the SATA mode to Compatibility, Legacy , ATA or IDE.

3) Re-create the image after including the switches -ib and -fdsp. (-ib will take a Sector copy of boot files and -fdsp preserves disk Signature).

 

-- Boot the client machine using WINPE boot disk.

-- Quit from Ghost.

-- Change the directory to x:/Ghost on Command Prompt.

-- Type ghost32.exe -ib -fdsp.

[Migration User]

I'm having the same issue as you Scottsee and have tried the things Harshu mentioned and for the life of me all I still get is that *&%$@# blinking cursor.   

[Migration User]

As mentioned by Harshu,

 Try changing the SATA mode to Compatibility, Legacy , ATA or IDE. If Still issue persists then create image using -IB switch and - FDSP and restore the image

[Migration User]

Thanks for the reply Madhus

I've tried all of the above and still get nothing but a blinking cursor in the upper left after applying the image

to another machine.

 

Going by Harshu's above list:

1) When I try a gdisk32.exe 1 /mbr /p on the disk it returns with "cannot reinitialise master boot record-- on a gpt or super disk the /mbr switch must be used with the /wipe to do anything"

 

2)Tried this also with no luck still the same cursor. I've changed everything SATA i can find in the bios to something different and tried to boot with still no luck.  I can put the drive i'm imaging from in another machine and it will boot fine.

 

3)I've tried using the -IB and -FDSP switches when creating and restoring the image.  No luck either. 

 

Am I going to have to set the SATA mode to something different and THEN take an image on these things?  I've never had any machines give me this much cloning trouble. I'm not too happy with these HP 6200's already. :(

[Migration User]

Ok so anyone out there in internetland having this issue in the future...

My problem was that I booted to the Windows 7 Install disk via EFI boot when wiping the old drive and starting from scratch. When you do this Windows will make the disk you are installing it on a GPT disk rather than the normal MBR disk.  This is what created the problem as ghost was not happy with that when taking an image and moving it to another drive.

I had to disable EFI boot int he BIOS and make sure I pointed directly to the CD drive when booting and make sure it wasn't starting from the windows boot manager.

Hopefully this will help others out there if they run into the problem.

[Edward Tippelt]

There is one other possibility here, depending on the size of the drive you are using. Windows cannot create a standard partition greater than 2Tb - you have to use GPT if you want a partition size >2Tb.

Also, many manufacturers are now shipping advanced sector drives at 2Tb and larger, which have a sector size of 4K instead of the traditional 512bytes.  For advanced sector drives, the use of the parameter

align = 1Mb

has been recommended.

I'm pretty sure that Nigel Bree, one of the Ghost Developers, has previously posted that the Ghost product was tested with the early EFI implementations and is known to work with them. However, whether there is an issue with EFI when working with GPT is another matter.  Perhaps Nigel will comment if he sees this thread.