I create automated deployment scripts for universal workstation images and I've found something I can't work through. I'm hoping someone else has come across this before and I'm just not searching properly, or that i'm missing something blatantly obvious 16 hours in.
Environment:
- Ghost32 11.5
- WinPE 3.0
- Windows XP Sp3 single partition disk image
It appears that any time the target drive is completely blank; after restoration and reboot I am stuck with an endlessly blinking cursor in the top left corner.
I'll detail below the scenarios I've tried so far in hopes someone sees something I've missed.
(In each of these the boot media for WinPE is a Usb drive (which loads WinPE in RAM @ X:) and the target hard drive is a 74Gb internal SATA)
Edit: I thought that Diskpart may be the problem and retried these using Gdisk32 to complete the disk operations with no change to the outcome.
Scenario 1
(Target drive has a working bootable primary ntfs Windows XP partition on it taking up the entire drive.)
I run Diskpart, select the disk (0) and CLEAN
it. (Leaving this step out will produce the same results)
I then run ghost32.exe and navigate to local disk from image and select my image, targeting disk 0
Everything works as planned system boots sysprep runs we're good to go.
Scenario 2
(continued from above state)
Boot back into WinPE. Run Diskpart, select disk 0 and CLEAN
it.
Reboot system back into WinPE.
(I verified that disk 0 is empty)
I run ghost32.exe as above and restore the disk from image.
Blinking cursor without end.
If I reboot into WinPE and restore again at this point it will work, essentially the same as scenario 1 only it was [not] working before hand.
Scenario 3
(thinking that it may have something to do with the drive letter assignment within WinPE and changes that Ghost32 may make to the restored disk)
I boot into WinPE and CLEAN
disk 0, then reboot again.
When the target drive is blank the source drive receives the C: drive letter within WinPE. Once restored the newly created partition will receive a later letter (E: in this instance, the Cd-Rom drive receives D: [It is empty]).
Booted back into WinPE; I enter Diskpart and reassign the drive letter of the source drive from C: to W: and exit Diskpart.
I run ghost32.exe as above and restore the disk from image.
Blinking cursor without end.
Scenario 4
(Booted, cleaned, and rebooted again)
I enter Diskpart and create a primary partition on disk 0 (Tried both RAW and formatted as NTFS on two different attempts).
I run ghost32.exe as above and restore the disk from image over the newly created partition.
Blinking cursor without end.
Scenario 5
(Booted, cleaned, and rebooted again)
I enter Diskpart and create a primary partition on disk 0 that is 10MB in size, unformated RAW and not ACTIVE.
I reboot the system back into WinPE (source still receives drive C: as it is the only formatted partition) I run ghost32.exe as above and restore the disk from image. ...
Everything works as intended, sysprep runs and desktop comes up.
Question
Why in the world does there need to be a partition on the target drive at the time that the build OS starts for Ghost32 to produce a workable recovered disk?
What am I doing wrong here, I have got to be missing something. If I'm recovering an entire disk why would it matter what was [or more precisely; wasn't] on the target disk prior to the restore. I should be getting an exact copy of the original which was also disk 0 and the only drive on the system.
Any help here would be greatly appreciated, I'm ready to rip my hair out. I don't really want to have to script in creating a raw partition and forcing a reboot on detection of a blank target (which is the most likely scenario when someone is rebuilding a workstation).
Follow Up
The problem only appears to occur on HP nc6400 Laptops. I've yet to find another model of workstation that will recreate the problem. I've now been able to test on several and they all exhibit the same behavior (lucky for me we just pulled all of these from the field due to age).
The problem does NOT occur using the same image when loaded from a Dvd; So it does appear to be related to the source media. I had thought it might be the way the system was detecting the USB drive (Some treat them as removable media, others as fixed disks), but on another system I had at my disposal that allowed for control over this option failed to exhibit the same problem in either mode.
When restoring the system using ImageX the problem does not occur, so it appears to be an issue with the way this particular system is treating the USB drive and the post restoration operations that Ghost32 performs.