ZizziBaddi.com – El Friki Playero

Mission: handling .TIB files, backup and restore partitions with Acronis Rescue Media by booting from USB or SD, no optical drive required, works on Eee 1000H but can be replicated on other platforms easily.

When you have a perfect WinXP installation, with all updated drivers, all of your coreload applications and settings done, do create an Acronis Image and when things go wrong, you will be able to return to this perfect installation in minutes and with no efforts.

Scenario: Asus Eee 1000H with 3 partitions. C – 30Giga, D – 30Giga, E – about 100Giga. Working instance of Win XPP Eng on C Drive and willing to restore and image of Win XPP on D Drive.

1 – Boot WinXPP on C, or do this with a working computer. Have or install Acronis True Image with Rescue Media Builder feature

2 – Connect a USB Flash drive. I have used a MMC with SD Adapter of 512Mega and a JetFlash Trascend USB PenDrive of 1Giga. Both worked

3 – Copy your .TIB file on the E Drive.

4 – Run Acronis and click on Tools/Create Bootable Rescue Media, follow instruction on screen and when prompt, choose the SD or the USB Flash Drive Letter. Acronis will format it, make it bootable and prepare the drive

5 – From your working XPP on C Drive. Open Explore and click on Tools/Folder Options/View and enable Show Hidden Files and Folders, disable Hide extensions for known file types, disable Hide protected operating system files. Click on Apply, Apply to All Folders and then on OK

6 – With such Explore window, navigate to C root folder. You should be able to see much more files there now. Create a backup copy of boot.ini and put it somewhere. Then edit the original boot.ini, the good one will look like this:

[Boot Loader]
timeout=10
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP C Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP D Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

7 – Now I will teach you a trick that I have found yesterday. Depending on everyone’s HDD and other things, Windows would see and name your partitions in several ways, so the above works on my 1000H but not on my customer’s one.

The trick is to add fake entries and then have “msconfig” tells you which are wrong.

THIS WILL AVOID THE KNOWN ISSUE:

“\system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupt please reinstall the copy of above file”

Add some lines on your c:\boot.ini, like below:

[Boot Loader]
timeout=10
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP C Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP 2″ /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP 3″ /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP 4″ /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP 5″ /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

8 – These 5 should be enough. Now click on Start, type “msconfig” and hit enter. On System Configuration Utility, select the label BOOT.INI and you will see it has loaded your c:\boot.ini, now click on Check All Boot Path and it will tell you which entry are not valid, offering you to disable them from boot.ini.

DO NOT DELETE ANY ENTRY, since you will have to do that later on

9 – Now have your D Partition empty and reboot your Asus Eee or the like, hit ESC during POST and you will be prompt with the boot menu, choose the SD or USB you have created before with Acronis, hit enter.

10 – You will see a blank screen with Acronis Loading on upper left and after a while you will be able to choose between Safe Mode and Full Mode. Choose Full Mode. The mouse should work at this time

11 – On Acronis Rescue, click on Recovery and follow the instructions. You will have to select the TIB file to restore, the (source) partition to restore from that TIB, the (target) partition  on your drive. The target partition should be D Drive, but since the partitions might have been called differently, make sure you choose the right one. Click on next til the restore procedure starts.

12 – When it ends, close Acronis Full interface and reboot.

13 – The boot.ini menu we hacked before should appear, press any arrow key to stop the stopwatch and select

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP 2″ /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Hit enter and check if Windows on D Drive starts or if you get the hal.dll error

“\system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupt please reinstall the copy of above file”

If that happens, shut it down by holding power button for 10 seconds and then restart it, this time choose the next entry

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP 3″ /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Does WinXPP on D Drive starts? If yes, good…let it go if not, again…shut down and restart it

Try every entries until you find the good one for the new WinXPP on D Drive and take note of what was it, reboot when you can and this time start the WinXPP on C Drive

14 – Again Start / msconfig / BOOT.INI, Check All Boot Path. This time it should tell you which Boot Paths are wrong and should not show the good Boot Path you have found before. So this time you can delete the wrong entry. For example at the end your boot.ini might be like this:

[Boot Loader]
timeout=10
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP C Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP D Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Or like this:

[Boot Loader]
timeout=10
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP C Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP D Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I am sure you have understood the trick. Windows tries to boot but the boot.ini entries contains wrong Boot Path and you have to fix them so that you can have and start various Windows instances on the same drive.

You have restored a Windows TIB image on your second partitions and you have 2 Windows Instances working your Eee!

The next mission will be to have a Windows Running from SD or USB so…the new boot.ini will look like this:

[Boot Loader]
timeout=10
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP C Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP D Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP SD Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”WinXPP USB Drive” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

People! I have been able to restore an XP Acronis backup (.tib file) by booting from SD (also USB works).

It worked on my machine and my colleague’s one.

I will soon write an article about it and then I will explain how to fix the “hal.dll missing or corrupt” file since it has nothing to do with hal.dll file!

The article is ready and available here!

http://www.zizzibaddi.com/blog/restore-xp-on-eee-1000h-from-sd-usb-with-acronis-rescue-tutorial

Cheers!

I do love Acronis True Image as I have loved Ghost back then during the old times…

My goal this time was to be able to boot my Eee PC Asus 1000H from USB using Acronis Rescue Media to select a partition backup (.TIB files) from my E: partition on HDD and restore it on C: or D: partitions.

My .TIB files contains a fully operational WinXPP instance with all 1000H drivers and the coreload software I use.

Being able to restore an image without using any external CD Reader was my primary purpose.

Requirements:

- Asus EeePC 1000H or the like
- Acronis True Image with Rescue Media Builder installed and working
- SD Card with 46mb of free space, I suggest you to use an empty SD card, the smallest you have.
I have tried with a Vking 127Megabyte and failed, then I have tried with a SunDisk MMC with SD Adapter 512Megabytes and succeeded

1 – Download and unzip USB_MultiBoot_10.zip

2 – Then run USB_MultiBoot_10.cmd, hit any key to continue, then hit H and the format tool will appear, select the USB Drive and format it. Once done, click close

3 – Run Acronis True Image and click on Tools -> Create Bootable Rescue Media. It will prompt you to choose which device to use. Select the letter assigned to your SD Card.

4 – Acronis does copy the necessary files and active the SD partition so you can boot off it

5 – Once done, restart your computer and hit ESC to invoke where to boot from, choose the SD Card Reader and hit enter

6 – Acronis Rescue Media will boot and start from your SD, it will then allow you to choose between Safe or Full Mode and with either of them you will be able to select a .TIB file and restore it to its partition. This way you no longer need to re-install WinXPP from USB as I have already explained here and here, and you will be able to restore a full XPP with drivers and software in minutes.

Comments welcome…and please…I have not tried but I think you can do the same with a USB Drive, either Flash or HDD. Let me know!