Laptop shuts off during Ghost imaging operation

[Knack]

HP pavilion xf255 laptop with 1.4 Ghz Athlon-4 CPU and 256 MB RAM.
HP tech support expired 4 months ago.
Boot diskette for Ghost 2002 PE is WinME with RAMdrive.
Have also tried a WinME boot diskette without RAMdrive.

About 5-12% thru the HDD to CD-RW image writing process, the laptop simply
shuts itself "off". Don't know whether it's a DOS crash or that it's because
the laptop's BIOS thinks the laptop is not in use. Unfortunately, BIOS setup
is inaccessable except for boot drive and date/time choices. I've tried
alternating with Pause Break and Esc keys throughout the Ghosting process in
an attempt to "pinch" the BIOS in order to keep the laptop alive until Ghost
completes, but to no avail.

Thought about removing the 2.5" HDD and connecting it to a regular PC in
order to do the Ghost imaging. But Symantec says that coupling a source HDD
to a different computer for doing that will result in an image that will
never be bootable after being restored to a disk. For imaging, the hardware
must remain identicle.

Suggestions from anyone who has Ghosted a laptop's HDD successfully?

 

[Lil' Dave]

Have successfully used DI (boot diskettes) on a HP Pavilion ZE5155 laptop
running XP. Imaging was complete and successful, burned to cdrw.

Although there's a bit more in the bios you've mention on this particular
laptop, there is no sleep or otherwise function in the PhoenixBIOS setup
utility on this particular laptop.

To verify that the bios isn't shutting the laptop down, simply boot from the
boot diskette and leave the laptop alone for an hour. This may happen
irregardless if the batteries are low, and you are running on batteries.

Dave

 

[Rod Speed]

HP pavilion xf255 laptop with 1.4 Ghz Athlon-4 CPU and 256 MB RAM.
HP tech support expired 4 months ago.
Boot diskette for Ghost 2002 PE is WinME with RAMdrive.
Have also tried a WinME boot diskette without RAMdrive.

What happens if you use the standard PCDOS instead ?

About 5-12% thru the HDD to CD-RW image writing process,
the laptop simply shuts itself "off". Don't know whether it's a
DOS crash or that it's because the laptop's BIOS thinks the
laptop is not in use. Unfortunately, BIOS setup is inaccessable
except for boot drive and date/time choices.

It must have some way of specifying how long before it shuts down etc.

I've tried alternating with Pause Break and Esc keys throughout
the Ghosting process in an attempt to "pinch" the BIOS in order
to keep the laptop alive until Ghost completes, but to no avail.

Thought about removing the 2.5" HDD and connecting it to a regular
PC in order to do the Ghost imaging. But Symantec says that coupling
a source HDD to a different computer for doing that will result in an
image that will never be bootable after being restored to a disk.

Dont believe it.

For imaging, the hardware must remain identicle.

I think its more likely that they are actually talking about
a completely different situation, using an image created
on one PC restored on a different PC with different
hardware and expecting it to boot the restored system.

That can work, and even when it doesnt, you
can usually just repair the restored image after
having booted from the XP CD etc anyway.

Suggestions from anyone who has
Ghosted a laptop's HDD successfully?

The other obvious approach is to ghost it over the network.
Thats likely to be about as fast as image creation to a
burner. Little bit more fiddly to setup, and obviously you
do need a NIC in the laptop, but its very doable.

Ghost actually supports ghosting over a laplink
cable too, tho I wouldnt do it that way myself.

It'd be worth trying Ghost 2003 and Drive Image
to see if one of those manages to keep the laptop
from going to sleep during the image creation.

 

[Knack]

Thanks Dave. I tested it with just the DOS prompt running for 90 minutes, as
you suggested, and no auto-shutdown.

So it's looking like Ghost is crashing DOS; not the BIOS shutting the laptop
due to operator inactivity.

Unless there are no other config adjustments to made for DOS, I guess
switching the utilities (from Ghost to DI) is the next logical thing to try.
I don't posess DI yet.

BTW, which version of DOS are you using for the boot diskette (6.22, 7.x,
Win98, WinME, Dr-DOS)? And are there any special DOS configs on your boot
diskette?

Also, is your CD-RW model one that was approved by PowerQuest for use with
DI?

My CD-RW drive doesn't appear on Symantec's list of approved Ghost drives.
However, that doesn't mean it's not suitable; just means that Symantec never
got around to testing it (or any other Toshiba CD-RW drive). I think this
drive is OK with Ghost, otherwise Ghost could never have been able to even
start writing to it. I've been able to write over 1GB until the laptop shuts
down. Ooh...

No, not that. Thought for a minute that DOS crashes when the CD becomes full
with the compressed image file, but the laptop had also shut down earlier
when only 400MB from the source (I noted the progress) had been imaged.
Ghost is set to span CDs and automatically name the new image file on each
CD.

 

[Knack]

What happens if you use the standard PCDOS instead ?


It must have some way of specifying how long before it shuts down etc.



Dont believe it.


I think its more likely that they are actually talking about
a completely different situation, using an image created
on one PC restored on a different PC with different
hardware and expecting it to boot the restored system.

That can work, and even when it doesnt, you
can usually just repair the restored image after
having booted from the XP CD etc anyway.


The other obvious approach is to ghost it over the network.
Thats likely to be about as fast as image creation to a
burner. Little bit more fiddly to setup, and obviously you
do need a NIC in the laptop, but its very doable.

Ghost actually supports ghosting over a laplink
cable too, tho I wouldnt do it that way myself.

It'd be worth trying Ghost 2003 and Drive Image
to see if one of those manages to keep the laptop
from going to sleep during the image creation.

To Ghost over a network connection, the WinXP OS of the laptop must be
running. Would that still be a bootable image of that HDD (including MBR and
MFTs of the partitions)?

 

[Rod Speed]

To Ghost over a network connection, the
WinXP OS of the laptop must be running.

Nope, it just loads DOS net drivers etc.

Would that still be a bootable image of that HDD
(including MBR and> MFTs of the partitions)?

Yep, since its still at the DOS level, nothing has changed on that.

 

[Lil' Dave]

Thanks Dave. I tested it with just the DOS prompt running for 90 minutes, as
you suggested, and no auto-shutdown.

So it's looking like Ghost is crashing DOS; not the BIOS shutting the laptop
due to operator inactivity.

More likely, something else failed or stopped. Lack of operator input
should not be a factor

Unless there are no other config adjustments to made for DOS, I guess
switching the utilities (from Ghost to DI) is the next logical thing to try.
I don't posess DI yet.

BTW, which version of DOS are you using for the boot diskette (6.22, 7.x,
Win98, WinME, Dr-DOS)? And are there any special DOS configs on your boot
diskette?

Win98SE's version of msdos. Nothing special written for it.

Also, is your CD-RW model one that was approved by PowerQuest for use with
DI?

Don't know as I can't specifically ID it.

My CD-RW drive doesn't appear on Symantec's list of approved Ghost drives.
However, that doesn't mean it's not suitable; just means that Symantec never
got around to testing it (or any other Toshiba CD-RW drive). I think this
drive is OK with Ghost, otherwise Ghost could never have been able to even
start writing to it. I've been able to write over 1GB until the laptop shuts
down. Ooh...

Find the power savings thing in windows and set conditions to none.

No, not that. Thought for a minute that DOS crashes when the CD becomes

full

You're thinking of MS Backup in a twisted sort of way.

 

[Skip]

Thought about removing the 2.5" HDD and connecting it to a regular PC in
order to do the Ghost imaging. But Symantec says that coupling a source HDD
to a different computer for doing that will result in an image that will
never be bootable after being restored to a disk. For imaging, the hardware
must remain identical.

Suggestions from anyone who has Ghosted a laptop's HDD successfully?

Worked fine for me. Got a company-issue Compaq 610C (40GB HDD) and decided
to put a larger drive in it. Before first even booting the laptop, I put
both drives into a desktop machine with both laptop drives (I have two
adapters) and no other hard drives. Booted from a Ghost floppy (no main
hard drive in the desktop after I put the laptop drives in it) and did the
drive transfer.

Worked like a charm. I'm using the "copy target" system to send this reply.

- Skip

 

[Bob Kos]

Is the CPU fan operating? Had an HP that acted similarly recently.

HP pavilion xf255 laptop with 1.4 Ghz Athlon-4 CPU and 256 MB RAM.
HP tech support expired 4 months ago.
Boot diskette for Ghost 2002 PE is WinME with RAMdrive.
Have also tried a WinME boot diskette without RAMdrive.

About 5-12% thru the HDD to CD-RW image writing process, the laptop simply
shuts itself "off".

<SNIP>

 

[Steve]

In one situation it worked for me. Used 2.5 to 3.5 adapters to connect
old drive from notebook to desktop system. Put new drive on Secondary
controller with a 2nd adapter. Worked great when I put the new larger
drive into my notebook. This was Win98.

My second attempt on cloning a Winxp drive from notebook to larger
drive didn't work as well. Put cloned drive in and got a message about
NTLDR. Can only guess that the geometry was understood differently
when the drive was placed in desktop compared to when it was placed
into the notebook (the intended machine). I was wondering if I had
noted the cylindering/sectoring/dma stuff from the original drive in
it's original machine (the notebook) could I have mimicked those
parameters in my desktop bios and been successful since the parameters
would have matched before and after the clone.