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Reply With QuoteHave seen this when the end user doesn't shut the machine down properly.
Truecrypt booting error We have recently started using truecrypt on our laptops at work, and after the first few there were no problems and they all worked.
On a couple we've had an issue where it encrypts perfectly, but when you restart it after encryption, it refuses to find the hard drive to boot from. It is not on hidden, as we have checked and I've tried it three times, and two colleagues have also tried it, and when we put in the rescue disc it boots up fine. Has anyone got an idea why this would happen?
Thankyou in advance
Have seen this when the end user doesn't shut the machine down properly.
Well these particular ones with the issues haven't been handed out, and tbh after the first one they've been handled like royalty. We even tried nothing but xp, no drivers, trucrypted, then shut down and it did this.
Is there a restore partition or anything on there?
Or literally laptop 1 hard disk single partition installed, rebooted dead?
Which laptops are you using and which settings throughout the truecrypt setup?
Well the problem is, theres nothing to restore, as it happens immediately after the encryption process.
We selected
encrypt the system partition
standard truecrypt volume
AES encryption
RIPemd-160
Then the rest of the stuff with the rescue disc and the pre-test.
I apologise if have anything wrong, but thats what i remember doing.
We are using stone laptops, mr-052
Very odd if you've done them all the same to only have a couple exhibiting the problem.
The instructions look OK; I'm sure someone will have some ideas on why it's not playing ball.
Been a while since I've used truecrypt.
I thought it might be something in the BIOS, as its only the stone mr-052 and mr-055 which are doing it, all the samsung and acer laptops just seem to accept. All the settings are the same in the truecrypt set up, and Ive changed all the BIOS settings that could make sense to change.
Ah sorry I thought you had two failures of the same kind of laptop whereas all of the others were fine.
Maybe some Stone customers on here who may have/can try it on the same laptop.
BIOS up to date etc?
I'll try and get a bios update off of stone, and let you know how it goes, cheers.
Right Ive updated the BIOS twice, and I've tried the other methods of encryption. It still refuses to find the hard drive. Any ideas?
Cheers
Did you get anywhere with this issue? We are having the exact same issue (albeit using a different encryption solution, not truecrypt) on a Stone MR-052 laptop. I've spoken with Stone and basically there is nothing they can do. We both agree from the test results it sounds like either a bug or a problem with the BIOS code, but even if they knew what it was there is nothing the supplier will do and under the licensing terms Stone are not permitted to modify the BIOS themselves.
Because all the MR-052 laptops tested thus far appear to have the same problem, they can't put it down to a hardware fault with a particular machine either to send an engineer. Especially as there are no error messages.
The encryption itself has taken perfectly, and if we take the disk out of the Stone and put it in an Acer it boots without issue (although it complains about the hardware differences rather vociferously.) But in the Stone the disk is seemingly just ignored and the machine falls back to trying a PXE boot before giving up - as if no hard disk was present.
We also came up against this issue some time ago. We had assumed, as Kim hinted at, that the problem was caused by the recovery image created by Stone. Since you are able to boot the drive in other hardware makes this theory sound less likely. Have you put your own image on there laptops or are you using Stone's? If you don't find a solution you could always hand out discs/sticks with truecrypt on to users to allow them to boot and claim it as (albeit crude) two-factor authentication by design.
Yep we get the reverting to PXE boot issue to im afraid. And as of it yet it is unresolved, we have a mix of stone images and ones that have been redistributed so xp installed from scratch. Still nothing
Dont suppose anyone has any other ideas? Besides throw the damn things out the window...
This isn't just a TrueCrypt issue.
I've had similar problems with Stone laptops (particularly the MR52) and Ghost.
When an image taken using GhostPE then pushed out the image pushed out would not boot.
The -IB which images the whole boot track had no effect whatsoever.
I found that the imaged laptops *would* boot if an XP install bootable CD was left in the drive and the boot from CD was left to time out.
I suspect that it is something to do with the self repair feature of the BIOS / motherboard though I have no proof of this it's just a hunch.
As I don't image these laptops en mass I get round this by imaging manually which doesn't modify the boot sequence / track / etc. of the laptop at all.
My suggestion would be to contact Stone about this, I've always found them to be helpful.
Nostromoo (16-07-2009)
Interesting idea TheLibrarian, and in fact you're right! I wish I'd thought of that.
So we encrypt the disk in the Stone, rebooted, machine won't boot. We already knew it booted in another PC, but now we can also boot it in the Stone if chaining the MBR on the disk from the boot loader on the CD. Just need to make sure the boot order is correct and that the CD is always in the drive and the user doesn't press any key when booting.
I think that proves the fault is in the BIOS of this model, although given my conversation with Stone this doesn't really help at all. As helpful as the engineer I spoke to was, his hands were pretty much tied - they cannot get support from the manufacturer and under the licensing agreement they would be unable to fix the BIOS themselves anyway.
Still at least it gives me closure. I'll feed it back to Stone though, at least it can go in a knowledge base if they have such a thing.
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