Deploy VMware XP setup to laptop

[googlemad]

I need to get 4 laptops up and running for something on Tuesday. So I built a basic XP image in Sun VirtualBox last week at work (Since I wanted to test how good it was compared to VMWare) and ghosted it to a physical Samsung P55 laptop after removing VirtualBox tools and changing IDE controller in XP to standard. Installed laptop drivers and working great.

 

Ghosted the exact same image across to a P500 laptop and it didn't boot! (I could access the F8 menu for XP but after that, just a blank screen.)

 

So now I'm trying to build a similar image using VMWare workstation 7 and ghost that across tomorrow morning, will I have the same issues?

[DrCheese]

It's probably a HAL issue (XP isn't HAL independent like Vista/7 is) So yes, you'll likely to have the same issue.

 

I'm not sure you can change the HAL (Easily anyway) after install.

[morganw]

You can switch HAL after imaging, if it's working enough to replace the files.

It's probably easier to go back to virtual box and rebuild from scratch with the correct HAL (enable or disable IO APIC) or use SysPrep or MySysPrep to change the HAL on the initial boot.

 

This page tells you all you need to know about different HALs, and how to manually switch between them - Vernalex.com - Welcome

[Arthur]

Could be HAL related as mentioned above. The P55 laptop has a dual core processor while the P500 has a single-core Celeron M.

 

It could also be partition related. For example, some laptops like Acer's & Dell's have a hidden recovery or utility partition. When you deploy an image created in a VM (which almost always has a single partition) to a computer which also contains a hidden partition, Windows will refuse to boot because the partition numbers in the boot.ini file are different. e.g. "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS" instead of "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS".

 

By the way, if you use MDT 2010 there is a script which can change HALs for you automatically here. Make sure to read the comments on that page though.

[googlemad]

The VMWare image worked

 

(Was configured as a 1 processor 2 core VM with IDE HDD).

 

Removed VMWare tools and changed to Standard PCI IDE controller before taking image.

 

Our P500s seem to have Pentium Dual Core processors rather than Celerons.