Restoring Image on New Hardware

Hello. We have purchased Acronis True Image Version 8. I have installed it on the server we wish to backup and completed an image. I have installed the image onto a new server to test the restore and found that although the restore process completes successfully I cannot boot the computer. I get the following error:

"Windows 2000 could not start because tht following file is missing or corrupt: <windows 2000 root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe. Please re-install a copy of the above file."

I have tried reloading the operating system which did not work. I contacted the Acronis Tech support and they told me that I had to run 'Sysprep.exe' on the server before doing the image. I read through the links about Sysprep that they gave me but have a few questions which they have not answered.

I am wondering if anyone else has tried to install an image on a new/different computer? Have you been successful? I really don't want to be stripping the SID and computer name of a live server in order to get the image. The whole idea of buying True Image was so that we could get 'live' images and have them stored on hard drives; ready to put in at a moments notice. We do not want to buy identical servers as backups either. We want to have a couple backup computers ready so that if a server goes down we just pop that in temporarily until we can get the 'real' server ordered.

Do I have to use Sysprep? If so, here are my questions about it:

We wanted to use True Image to run full image/incremental backups every night. Would Sysprep.exe need to be run every night? Once it is run and a full image is made, could we continue to do incremental backups without running Sysprep.exe again?

If I run Sysprep.exe and make that image, would it set the SID and run the wizard to set the computer name again if we were to use it in the future?


Thanks in advance.

Cheers
Dayle

 

Hello Itdept,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Server Disk Backup Software.

Please accept my apologies for the delay with the response.

Yes, if you plan to restore your image to a system with the different hardware configuration then you should prepare your Windows using Microsoft System Preparation Tool (sysprep.exe) as it is described in this FAQ article each time you create an image (either full or incremental).

Please be aware that even in case of using Microsoft System Preparation Tool we can not guarantee the successful transferring of your operating system to a different hardware. Actually no one can guarantee this.

If you have any questions on how to use Microsoft System Preparation Tool then please contact Microsoft Support Team. I believe they will help you.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov

 

I have successfully created XP Pro images with TI8 on non-networked Dell desktop P4's, run Sysprep on them and restored those images to other Dell P4's and Pentium laptops and also a Toshiba laptop with excellent results. Upon first boot of the restored images you'd get most of the expected XP setup dialog boxes and then everything was good to go.

However, it took me many experiments with setting up Sysprep to get a successfully functional image. That was the very difficult and time-consuming part for me. Sysprep has too many unclear setup choices as to what the ultimate effects will be until you experiment or know what you're doing (which I really didn't at the time).

 

Sysprep Question

I used Sysprep to prepare an image for another laptop which is the same model but with some differences. I used the instructions in the FAQ for Acronis.

A) Couldn't restore on target computer...started to restore but after a few minutes, computer shuts down. How do I troubleshoot this one? I tried different images but captured them in a local partition and transferred the files to a USB drive and made a DVD disc.

B) On the source computer, the sysprep utility keeps showing up...how to get rid of this? I tried just removing the sysprep directory but start up behaviour changed. Minor but the start window is activated.

Thanks,

 

Re: Sysprep Question

Hello lg777,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please clarify in what exact moment your target computer shuts down?

Could you please try to restore an image from the bootable rescue media?

Please be aware also that we do not guarantee the successful transferring of your operating system to a different hardware.

I'm afraid that you should contact Microsoft Support Team to clarify that issue.

Thank you.
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Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

Let me understand this please.

One has to do this every time you make a backup image? We backup our mission critical files twice a day. We would have to do this every time?

 

Hello robertpri,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Yes, you understood this correctly.

However, the main words here are not each time you create an image, but if you plan to restore your image to a system with the different hardware configuration.

The point is that Acronis True Image program is basically dedicated to backup computers, but not to transfer the operating systems to a computers with the different hardware configuration.

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov

 

Thank you for having patience with me, but this is a critical issue, and I still have the question on concept.

This software is "...basically dedicated to backup computers..."

so what does one do with it?

I am not being facetious here, but the primary reason for a backup is some kind of hardware failure that forces one to restore to another drive.

If there is never a failure, so you don't use the backup.
If there is a failure, the restore must go to another computer/drive.

Or am I missing something here?

 

The key idea is that SysPrep removes certain information that allows you to restore an image on a completely DIFFERENT computer.

Most people use True Image as backup software for a single PC. You don't need to worry about using SysPrep when you swap out a failed hard drive to restore an image.

For more discussion on this, take a look at this thread.

 

Another good reason to have Data backup as well as OS image backup. If you can't restore the OS image to a different hardware computer at least the data backup will be usable on any computer. The data backup could be a simple file copy or a partition image.

 

Take a look at this link as it may help.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314082

It describes how to move a hard drive containing a windows install from one machine to another with different hardware. You basically add a few entries in the registry for generic mass storage drivers while using machine A. Then move the drive to machine B and boot it up.

You will come to windows with a bunch of "found new hardware" messages for all the hardware machine B has that A didn't. Once the hardware is installed the drive will work for both machine. You can then repeat the process on any other computers you want of image the drive. This sometimes won't work depending on the HAL type of the machines.

Leave out the portion of the registry file where it adds drivers since the drivers are usually installed by default.

This link seems to have some good information on HAL types and may lead to some answers on how to create an image that will work seemless on ANY hardware.

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=309283

This is where I'm stumped because a current client has been buying "Best Buy Brand" workstations for years and needs a universal image for like 10-15 different PC models.

Hope this helps,