BartPE/VistaPE plug-in help with 64-bit OS and ICH9R chipset

This post has two parts:

1. When making a Bart or Vista PE disk from a 64-bit evironment, I've learned that one must take care to ensure the Acronis Plug-In is scripted to look at the "Program Files(x86)" directory where Acronis and its Common Files install.

and
2. How on Earth do I properly place the drivers for my SATA drives, in ACHI mode, on a ICH9R chipset in order to get the BartPE disk to see my hard disks (and ANY of its plug-ins including Acronis TI 10, 11, and DD 10)?

I must have made over a dozen attempts at making BartPE disk (and VistaPE disk) that will run Acronis Disk Director and I simply cannot make it work. I seriously starting to doubt my intelligence as I have used all available sources of instruction, including Mustang's guide.
I can, however, get Acronis True Image to work, but the plug-in won't see my drives. My drives are Sata in ACHI mode (not RAID and not IDE Emulation). My first hurdle was getting the BartPE/VistaPE disk to be created using Vista Ultimate 64 (not easy as I needed the Vista WAIK plus the plug-ins are designed to take information and files from the "Program Files" directory, but on a 64-bit OS, Acronis and its Common Files install in the "Program Files(x86)" directory, so this needs to be manually edited in the script).

Still, after figuring all of that out, and getting the plug-in to work, I simply can not get the BartPE (or VistaPE) disk to see my hard drives at all, including in the Acronis Plug-in. Is this something I am doing wrong (for example, I did not name my SCSI subdirectory "iastor") or does this have to do with my ACHI mode setting?

Personally, I would love to take CodeChegga up on the offer to try his/her BartPE CD, or even to simply look at the driver directory structure so I can copy it using my drivers (for the ICH9 chipset). I should also point out that I have the Abit P35 Pro motherboard and in addition to the ICH9R Intel chipset, I have a Jmicron chipset (for one IDE connector and eSata connectors). So perhaps it is the Jmicron drivers that are causing the problem?

My BartPE SCSI directory looks like this:
.../drivers/SCSIAdapters/Jmicron
and
.../drivers/SCSIAdapters/Intel

 

Hi Louis,

64 bit systems present some problems. That's why I put a note on my website saying my plugins don't support 64 bit systems. That being said, I'll try to answer your questions. You should build a BartPE disk by using a 32 bit WinXP SP2 source. In order for your drives to be detected, you will need to use 32 bit drivers not 64 bit. Put them in the drivers folder as outlined in the Guide.

I have played with TI 11 on a 64 bit system. I modified my TI 11 plugin to pick up all the files from the proper locations for both 32 and 64 bit systems. The problem is that there are 5 important files that can not be used from a 64 bit system. They are the driver files (snapman.sys, timntr.sys, tifsfltr.sys, tdrpman.sys) and schedul2.exe. These files are designed for the 64 bit system. In order for the plugin to work, I had to manually change these five files to their 32 bit versions. There is no way to pick up the 32 bit versions from a 64 bit system. You would need to install TI 11 in a 32 bit system and copy out the files. Then subsitute them in the plugin before building the BartPE disk. I would not be allowed to distribute these files with the plugin. Therefore, I can't make the plugin conveniently configure on both 32 and 64 bit systems.

Send me a PM with your email address and I'll send you the modified TI 11 plugin.

I haven't played with the VistaPE script on a 64 bit system. If you have it modified to get all the files, you should be able to make it get the 32 bit versions of the 5 files mentioned above. Get the files from a 32 bit system and put them on your hard drive in a folder you create. Modify the script to to pick them up from the location you created instead of from your system.

 

aaah... Thank you, Mustang for the explanation. Things make more sense now. The problem is that I have a chicken and egg problem.

I have a wonderful Vista 64 installation that is so perfectly configured I don't want to lose it. It was the first OS install on my new system, the one with the unsupported chipsets.
The reason I want to use DD10 outside of windows in the first place is to hide this OS when i install XP and use OSS to dual boot them.
So here is a catch-22... I need the DD10 rescue media install XP Pro (32 bit), but I first need XP-PRO installed to make a working BartPE disk.

Perhaps if I disconnect the Vista hard drive entirely, install XP Pro on another hard drive, install acronis, make the BartPE disk, then use it to Hide XP until I need it and reconnect the Vista OS.

The entire point of this whole exercise is to have a windows XP environment from which to restore my primary OS in the event that it gets corrupted or I end up hating a particular software. More importantly, in the event that I end up with malware or a bogged-down registry, I mush prefer to use an older image than deal with a repair or uninstall that may or may not have been as clean as I would have liked. My primary OS at the moment is Vista 64. The fact that due to my chipset problems I will end up with a BartPE CD that will also have the same restorative capabilities as my OS partition is a bonus.

Does that plan sound good to you?

 

Another option would be in install MS Virtual PC 2007 (assuming it works on Vista x64) or another VM software package, install XP Pro into that, install DD & TI, create the BartPE ISO file, save the ISO to a network share, then burn the ISO file using a program in Vista. Doing it this way eliminates the hard drive shuffle.

 

hmmm... sounds interesting. Could be a time-saver. Will give it a try.

 

The only thing you need to do on a 32 bit system is install TI 11 and get the 5 files I mentioned. Disk Director will work using the 32 bit version of snapman.sys from TI 11. You could install VPC 2007 in your Vista 64 system to do that. However, VPC 2007 only supports 64 bit versions of Vista Business, Ultimate and Enterprise. If you have Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, it will not install.

You should be able to build the BartPE disk from the Vista 64 bit system. All you need to do is copy a WinXP SP2 32 bit install CD to a folder on your hard drive and use that folder as the source for BartPE. You will also need to download the 32 bit AHCI drivers for your controller and put them in the drivers\SCSI folder.

 

I now have a version of the BartPE plugin for True Image Home 11.0 that will work on a 64 bit system for sale on my website. You only need to copy the 5 files listed in post #2 above to the Drivers32 folder in the plugin before configuring.

 

Do you mean because the Host OS is 64bit? I thought VPC 2007 just needed ANY version of Business, Ultimate or Enterprise. I've installed VPC 2007 in Home Premium 32bit and it worked fine too, even though it said it wasn't supported.

I have VPC 2007 installed in Vista Ultimate 32bit and can install and run Vista Ultimate 32bit in a VM just fine. Also Windows XP Pro SP2.

 

That's interesting. I tried to install it in Vista 32 bit Home Basic and it would not install. It just gave an error message that the operating system was not supported and quit. I didn't try installing it in Vista Home Premium because the Microsoft download page stated it was not supported.

 

Are you sitting down!?!?

It worked the first time using MS Virtual PC 2007!!! I have a 64 bit Vista Ultimate OS, where I installed VPC2007. Using VPC2007, I installed my XP Pro 32 bit OS, virtually. I went through the set-up, installed Zone-Alarm, Acronis TI 11 and Acronis DD 10 (not in that order) on the Virtual XP x86 Pro and then used (i) PEbuilder, (iI) Mustang's and Acronis' plugins, (iii) for Intel SATA: the 32-bit "ICH9R SATA ACHIController", (iv) for the Jmicron SATA: the 32bit "JMicron WinXP/Win2003 ACHI and Raid Controller" and then (v) followed Mustang's instructions to put everything in its place and create the BartPE disk.

For the drivers, this meant
(a) putting the JMicron drivers (jraid.cat; Jraid.sys; jraid_f.inf; and txtsetup.oem) into the directory: ".../Drivers/SCSIAdaptors/jmicron/"

and
(b) putting the Intel drivers (iaahci.cat; iaahci.inf; iastor.cat; iastor.inf; IaStor.sys; and TXTSETUP.OEM) into the directory ".../Drivers/SCSIAdaptors/iascor/"

Both True Image and Disk Director work perfectly, recognizing all of my ICH9R SATA drives, including the eSATA drives attached to the JMicron chipset (that is where my True Image back-ups are, so we're happy about that). If anyone with the Abit P35 Pro Mobo would like my driver structure, I just provided it.

As for the plug-ins, make your BARTPE in a 32-bit enviroment and Mustang totally takes care of the rest. I won't provide exact instructions related to the plug-ins as I believe that right belongs to Mustang.

On a personal note (and I will try my best not to turn this into some Rescue Media torchsong) I can't thank you guys enough. Using 32-bit Windows XP to run the Bart scripts was easy as pie... copying all files without error, creating the UpperZ (sp?) .inf file, and reading my serial number was all flawless. Also, I do not think I had been using the proper Intel SCSI drivers, as this time I took them from a folder created on my C: drive by the Intel Raid installer, as opposed to who- knows-what I was doing before.

In any case, I owe my piece of mind to all the good folks on these fora, and especially both Mudcrab and Mustang. I now have a Windows XP environment that includes my preferred and most reliable emergency recovery protocol, ATI and ADD, together! I used to tinker with my OS(es) without worry, constantly turning to the rescue media to save the day. After my move to the P35 chipset, I had no F11 Recovery Center, useless back-ups without any way to recover them, dual-boot scenarios all without hidden partitions, and no OS Selector to make it all mindless.

Okay, so I still don't have OSS. Yet. But with Disk Director now bootable outside of Windows, all of the tools are there to make sure that all but the stupidest mistakes will not wind up in catastrophe.

I seriously can't thank you guys enough. As you know, I've been in unsupported chipset hell for one month, maybe two, maybe more... I've lost count. So just let me end with a big thank you for sticking with me till the end. Seriously, Acronis needs to put you both on the payroll.

And to those at Acronis already on the payroll, thanks for quickly fulfilling my request for an .ISO of True Image that kept me alive through-out the battle to make DD10 work using the BartPE. With all of the complaints you are subjected to, business might dictate that you ignore the "little guy." But you didn't. So this thank you goes to Acronis, as well. You are quite a company, and deserve the recent reviews I've been reading for ATI 11, including some high praise in this month's issue of PC World.

Kindest regards,

Loox

 

Loox,

You're welcome for the help. I'm glad the VPC method worked for you. I use it all the time for testing and trashing. It's a great tool.

When I first got TI it was version 9 build 3,677 and I already knew it wouldn't support my new (at the time) computer's chipset (P965/JMicron) because I'd researched it.

However, by using mustang's Guide and plugins, I easily created a BartPE CD that let me have a working rescue CD.

 

You're welcome. Congratulation on getting it working.

You may also want to try it with VistaPE. I've just uploaded a new True Image Home 11.0 script for use on 64 bit systems. All you need to do is copy the five files mentioned in Post #2 above to the script folder before you use it.

You should be able to get OSS working in BartPE very easily. Install DD10 and the OSS option in the WinXP virtual machine. Use my DD10_Full BartPE plugin and you will have a fully working OSS on your BartPE disk. OSS must be installed in the virtual machine so that all the necessary files will get copied to the plugin.