Best Practice for Imaging & some problems

[Jezzer]

HI
this is my second foray into using fog for my “quick imaging” solution for my computer repair work. New 1.2.0 updates seem really good and like the new quick image feature as last time I had to use a hacked kernel for that, so keep up the good work!!
After some effort’s and teething issues I seem to be pretty much okay on SVN 2815 & latest official kernel 9th Dec 2014 (round about).

I’ve been using multiple parts for the 7 images but am running into issues with Single Resize when using vista.
I am running FOG in a virtual machine (VBOX) and also using virtual boxes to prepare and sysprep the images. Nothing fancy just up to date images with some typical apps installed and an xml syprep file to re arm the licencing to 30 days as I want it as vanilla as possible really.

So on my test desktop which has a SSD in it. Everything been great however testing the Vista restoring I just get a blinking cursor. Have googled around a bit and not found much but here is what I have tried. Using a different machine with a spinning HDD, and same result. I have reloaded the image into a virtual machine and that works with out a hicth. Have also tried different PXE boot from |HDD methods to no avail. Have check the images for curruption and tried repairing the mbr etc before imaging and no good. Not sure whats happening :_+(

Do you think I should use a physical machine for image prep instead of virtual machines. Just hoping for some tips really before I start wasting tons of time.

Could I use multiple parts and then have post install script to regrow / expand to fill the disk?

Many thanks

[Lee Rowlett]

sounds to me like driver issue could be the culprit, specifically SATA/HDD Controller drivers but would need more info to determine that . especially if u can reimage ur reference machine and it works fine… how are you including the drivers in your VM? you adding them to vm or post image? using sysprep? also if your using win7/vista on standard build (i.e. 100MB part + system part) i would just use single disk resizeable as FOG can handle it fine and it’s much easier to expand disk in the post install script then (also get the added benefit of ur image being smaller as single disk automatically remove pagefile + hiberfil.sys)

Personally VM is much easier and cleaner than using physical, guess it’s personal preference really. both have pros and cons in their on ways.

[Jezzer]

[quote=“Lee Rowlett, post: 40042, member: 28”]sounds to me like driver issue could be the culprit, specifically SATA/HDD Controller drivers but would need more info to determine that . especially if u can reimage ur reference machine and it works fine… how are you including the drivers in your VM? you adding them to vm or post image? using sysprep? also if your using win7/vista on standard build (i.e. 100MB part + system part) i would just use single disk resizeable as FOG can handle it fine and it’s much easier to expand disk in the post install script then (also get the added benefit of ur image being smaller as single disk automatically remove pagefile + hiberfil.sys)

Personally VM is much easier and cleaner than using physical, guess it’s personal preference really. both have pros and cons in their on ways.[/quote]

Thanks for the reply. I run a driver pack solution post build that works a treat so don’t include any drivers. Might be an idea to try IDE instead of sata using the vista builds but then I suppose don’t see why 7 & 8 work fine. I gather you need to re upload to change to single resize from multiple no resize, or can you just change in the drop down, actually of course won’t work. Good to know single resize works for 7 , same for 8? Thanks

[Junkhacker]

i have personally tested single resize on xp, windows 7, windows 8, and the windows 10 Technical Preview. i don’t have any vista computers, sorry. you can just change the image type in the dropdown and reupload to change the image type. no need to create a new image profile.
for your vista computer, did you do anything different then a completely normal fresh install on a blank drive?

[Lee Rowlett]

Win7 has better handling of SATA controllers than vista did/does which is why ur seeing the error on vista but no win7 - i’d still put my money on that being the issue, IDE would prove that theory

[Jamie Rozek]

Windows 7 has the AHCI drivers disabled by default, I believe. You can activate them in the registry, if you can get a boot disk to work.

The keys are located at:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci —> Set “Start” from 3 to 0.
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV —> Set “Start” from 3 to 0.

[Wolfbane8653]

Kewl but you can just disable the AHCI in the BIOS. So really you could go either way.