.vdi to physical HD via DriveXML, Dell Inspiron 530, AHCI

[enethrie]

Okay, here's the deal. Here I have setup a Virtual Machine that I customize and write the contents of it to a DriveXML image. From there I will copy the contents to a physical HD and plug it into a system. Basically I clone the VM to physical machines. But, I have been having a problem with one particular machine, the Dell Inspiron 530. It won't boot, it reaches the red part of the startup logo in Windows 7 (the guest VM) and restarts.

I have been trying everything to fix this and get it to boot up on this machine. I have added the .vdi as IDE and removed all SATA controllers, I heard on other posts this is related to AHCI, which in the BIOS of this machine I have not found a setting. I have written multiple copies of this image, with SATA, without SATA, IDE, PXII4, 3, and I'm trying ICH6 now.

It stops on classpnp.sys during boot, restarts. I've tried Windows 7 repair disk, of which it cannot repair. I've tried updating the BIOS. I really want to get this to work, and I am sure someone is going to find this useful once I figure out how to get it to work. The image being put on HD's for all the other machines here at work work! So I know it can be done, but for some reason this machine will not boot the HD.

Any ideas?

[iamalittlepepper]

Try this:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/For ... fbbe7d6579

Can you boot into Safe mode?

[enethrie]

Tried that- didn't work. And, no, I cannot boot into Safe Mode. It crashes at classpnp.sys

[enethrie]

P.S. I plug the HD into a Gateway and it boots up!

[enethrie]

I think I may have this fixed!

What I did was plugged the HD into a computer I knew it would boot up in (it wouldn't boot in the Inspiron 530) and went to the device manager and removed the ATAPI Controller (Ultra ATA Storage Controller in the Gateway), rebooted, took the drive out, and it booted in the Inspiron!

So, what I am going to do is this:

Boot up the Virtual Machine in PIIX4 mode (as it boots properly), remove the ATAPI Controller, reboot, change from PIIX4 to ICH and see what happens...

[enethrie]

Then, of course, I will write the image with Drive XML with it properly configured to run in ICH6.

Note: I used RAID on the Inspiron when it booted.

[sej7278]

What I did was plugged the HD into a computer I knew it would boot up in (it wouldn't boot in the Inspiron 530) and went to the device manager and removed the ATAPI Controller (Ultra ATA Storage Controller in the Gateway), rebooted, took the drive out, and it booted in the Inspiron!

isn't that what sysprep does - its a well know thing with cloning that you have to remove the disk drivers and let windows pick them itself upon boot, been like that since win98 days.

[enethrie]

Looks like the Virtual Machine doesn't like ICH6 mode on the IDE controller, I get the same error as on the Inspiron, even when I removed the IDE Controller using Device Manager.

I am going to try and setup the storage with SATA again, using AHCI. AHCI works on the Inspiron 530, when on RAID though! It says ACHI BIOS Installed on boot, so it has to work. I'm wondering, now, if the Controller in the VM needs to be unistalled before I write the image using DriveXML from within the VM.

[enethrie]

Thanks sej!

So, I booted the VM and used sysprep /generalize - gonna see if that works after writing the image with Drive XML and writing it to a HD.

1. boot the vm
2. run sysprep with quit (not shutdown)
3. write the VM's HD to a remote location using Drive XML.
4. write the Drive XML data to a physical HD
5. Boot the physical HD

[enethrie]

Uhm---- no.

The sysprep ended up resetting the VM (which didn't do much, but was un-desired) and it tacked on another user through the forced user creation when the VM restarted and reset a bunch of stuff. I think, for now, I am going to go back to removing the IDE controller and writing the data using Drive XML.

*Right when I removed the Standard Controller, it asked if I wanted to restart. I started Drive XML and am writing the data now. So, hopefully, when I write the image to a physical HD and plug it in there will be no controller and it will re-detect it.

[enethrie]

I ended up giving up on this. The HAL is different between the 530 and the rest of the machines I have. I will just configure and clone the 530 independently.