Ghosting a dual-boot system

[Pensionada]

We are a training center for elderly people. We have just purchased 11 new (identical PCs). These new Pic's will be dual-boot XP and Vista.
We have now completed the installation of our first system and would like to clone this  to the other systems.

Questions:

- Which program should we use? (Most programs do not seem to support dual-boot).

- Should we operate this from XP or from Vista or from a boot-CD?

- How does this work with software licenses?

- Any other considerations?

Please advise!

[Eg0Death]

My first inclination would for a software choice would have been Norton Ghost.  I've used it before with great success, but I can't recall if it will work with dual boot. 

If you a number of licenses equal to or greater than the number of computers you should have no worries. 

[Calum]

I'd choose Acronis TrueImage myself, I've used it for a while with no problems.
It can image the entire HDD, so it will have no problems with dual boot systems.
Use it from a boot CD which you can make once you install it on one computer.
Not sure if you would need another license for each computer once you have made the boot disk, hopefully someone can clarify this.

[Eg0Death]

I'll agree with Calum for this.  Norton Ghost might be better for deployments with large numbers of machines, but you only have 11.  I use Acronis True Image Workstation, but they don't seem to offer that anymore.  They've changed their product line a bit.  You can check it out here: http://www.acronis.com/smb/

[Pensionada]

Thank you for your responses.

In the mean time, I spoke to Symantec and they confirmed that Norton Ghost does not support dual-boot systems.

I also had some email exchanges with Acronis but they remained very vague. The most interesting comment that they made was: "Please be aware that according to Acronis software licensing policy, you should purchase one copy of Acronis program per each machine it will be used with."

Anyway, I downloaded the trial version of TrueImage Home 11.0 and installed it under Vista. Next, I connected an external disc that has the same size (250GB) as the hard disc and tried the clone option (disc utilities). This started normal but crashed without any real error message. When I looked at my external disc I found that it had copied all data neatly into 2 folders named the same as the original partitions. However, it has not copied the OS nor its folders (Windows, Program Files, etc.).

I also then realised that if it had cloned, I would have had to boot from the external disc (to restore onto the other systems) which is not possible as the external disc is connected via USB.

Any advise?

[Calum]

On the machine you installed TrueImage on, create a boot disk.
Then boot from that CD and clone your HDD from there onto the external drive.

[Pensionada]

On the machine you installed TrueImage on, create a boot disk.
Then boot from that CD and clone your HDD from there onto the external drive.

Sorry, Calum, I do not understand you.
Are you suggesting that I run TrueImage from the boot CD? How does that work?

[Calum]

Once you have installed Acronis, there is an option within the program to make a bootable disk.
I don't have the program installed right now (the disk is somewhere in my room, I think/hope), but hopefully someone else knows exactly how to get to it.
Once you have made this bootable disk, you can boot from this disk and Acronis runs entirely from the CD.

[Pensionada]

Thank you, Calum.
In the mean time, someone else suggested the use of DriveImageXML. This is a freeware program that works in conjunction with BartPE. I have tried this and it seems to work OK.
The fact that ImageDriveXML is totally free makes it very attractive (we are volunteers).
Sorry to have bothered you.
For others: DriveImageXML can be found at http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

[Calum]

I only found out about this program when WillyW made me aware of it.
It's free which is great, and if it works fine too then I've found a replacement for TrueImage.

[patio]

Are you saying DriveImage XML will clone a dual-boot system ? ?

[Pensionada]

After a day full of frustration:

We tried to restore the backup using DriveImageXML and we ran into problems. First of all, neither ImagedriveXML nor BartPE managed to create the new partitions so we did that using another boot disc.
Then we restored the backup and it all seemed to go as planned. But something had gone wrong as neither the XP nor the Vista system could be started. I guess that something with the MBR or track 0 was wrong.Both requested a repair action but those failed and we were back to zero.

So,we downloaded Acronis TrueImage Home 11, made a backup and a bootable disc with the program. This seemed to work very well. First of all, you do not have to create the partitions first and secondly everything can be restored as one big file in one action.

After the restore on a new system, XP turned out to be running OK, but Vista does not.
I get the following error:
Title Bar: Rundll32.exe Entry Point Not Found
Message: The procedure entry point SdbGetAppCompatDataSize could not be located in the dynamic link library apphelp.dll.
This is soon followed by other errors and a "Your user profile was not loaded correctly"...

Also, we noticed that C and D drives get switched in a real funny way.
Googling we found a similar problem reported in Technology questions, but no responses.
We need to have all 10 systems running by the end of this week and the only solution now seems to re-install Vista (and all its applications) on alll systems by hand, which seems so dumb....

Any suggestions?

[patio]

Since you now have Acronis there is in fact one more method you can attempt...
Vista handles the boot process different than earlier versions of Windows and this in fact may be where the hangup is with imaging...

NOTE: this is probably only a working solution if both partitions exist on the same physical drive...i haven't attempted it on a dual-boot using two physical HDD's.

Install XP.
Then after checking that all is running properly DLoad and install VistaBOOTPRO...Here

Use it to install Vista and again double check that all is running in XP and Vista.
If so do a few cold boots and then use ATI to create the image.
Try it on a clean machine and see if it works.

NOTE: All the methods i have tried to successfully image a dual-boot system have ended with much hair pulling and little success but perhaps this method will get you over the hump.
Best of Luck to you...

[Pensionada]

Thanks, Patio,
I will give it a try tomorrow morning; it is 6:40 pm here and I have had enough for today.
 

[patio]

I've had that feeling...better to start fresh anyways.

[Pensionada]

My final mail on this:

After trying all combinations of cloning and restoring that we thought might help, we gave up on trying to do this the smart way and made our copies the tough way.

So, what we did successfully:
1. We created one master system with XP and its applications on C, Vista on D, and shared data on E
2. Using Acronis TrueImage 11 Home we made a copy of the XP-partition on a USB-disc
3. On the new systems (the clones) we restored the XP-partition; not the MBR or track 0
4. On the clones we used Partition Magic to create the partitions.
5. We installed Vista in Partition D
6. We installed the Vista applications in partition D
7. We copied the data to partition E
8. We finalized the settings and Faronics Deepfreeze
9. We used VistaBootPro to change the start-up prompts and default
10. Steps 3 thru 9 were repeated 9 times (for each of the clones)

In retrospect: TrueImage turned out to be good for XP; at least we only did everything once there. My feeling is that either TrueImage has some flaws with Vista and dual-boot and/or with the combination with Faronics Deepfreeze.
I have reported the problem to Acronis.

This was a one-time action, so my interest in solutions is academic from now on.

Thank you all for your support!

[patio]

3. On the new systems (the clones) we restored the XP-partition; not the MBR or track 0

How did you do this ? ?

6. We installed the Vista applications in partition D
7. We copied the data to partition E

And i'm not clear on these ...

[Pensionada]

3. On the new systems (the clones) we restored the XP-partition; not the MBR or track 0

How did you do this ? ? Restore from an external disc using TrueImage

6. We installed the Vista applications in partition D
7. We copied the data to partition E

And i'm not clear on these ...

Installing the Vista applications meant just that: we simply installed all relevant programs by hand
The data was just a big folder with files that we copied from the external disc to the data partition.

These were normal jobs as if we had just one computer; except we did it 9 times ...