Sanboot Win7/8/10 after cloning disk on same Hardware

[albrecht]

Hello,

I want to boot an already installed operating system via iSCSI. I succeeded in the virtual environment. I have a VM as a PXE server and a VM as a client. I have installed Windows 7/8/10 on the client. Then I cloned the virtual hard drive with Clonezilla on a blank virtual hard drive in the PXE server. I then included this disk as an iSCSI target. I was able to boot successfully. My configuration is:

Code:

dhcp net0 && echo IP address: ${net0/ip} ; echo Subnet mask: ${net0/netmask}
set gateway 0.0.0.0
cpuid --ext 29 && set arch amd64 || set arch x86
set boot-url tftp://x.x.x.x
set keep-san 1
set initiator-iqn iqn.bablaba:test
sanhook iscsi:${next-server}::::iqn.blablabla:testimage
sanboot

My problem is, why i can not realize this on another real Hardware client? When I try to boot the iSCSI-Image from my physical Client the pxe process succed and one can see the loading windows logo. But after 5 minutes a bluescreen comes with the message "inaccessible bootdevice"




Can somebody help me to solve this problem please?


I used ipxe.lkrn and have deactivated UEFI. Furthermore, my bootimages are based on BIOS
The PXE-Server has the OS Ubuntu 18.04
The sanboot works in the virtual environment. I can boot windows 7, windows 8 and windows 10



Best regards
Albrecht

[NiKiZe]

Inaccessible bootdevice, the 0x7b error ....

Did you install the NIC in the image before trying to boot it?

The NIC needs to be installed into the image, if not then there is no way for the Windows kernel to find your disk once BIOS calls goes out of scope.
The NIC needs to be set to boot-critical for it to be loaded and started early in the boot process so the disk can be found and boot continued.

There should be several guides on this already,
But searching now and I find nothing, however here is a post explaining what needs to be done: http://forum.ipxe.org/showthread.php?tid...48#pid6648
Sorry for not being able to find the exact required registry hack right now.

[albrecht]

Thank you NikiZe for your quick answear and sry for my late reply,

It was also my guess that the NIC Drives are not supported. For this reason I have installed the Bootimage on the Computer that I would like to sanboot later. Then I cloned this Harddisk on the blank Disk of the PXE-Server.

The Question is: Do I need to search the network drivers for the PXE server or for the Client? In this case I already should have the NIC-Drives from the Client, or not?
How I can install the correct NIC-Drives? Unfortunately, I have not found a practical solution

My PXE-Server is on an ESXi-Server and consists of virtual hard disks. Is that perhaps the problem, that I installed the bootimage on a real harddisk and cloned it on a virtuell one? I only have this problem with sanboot on physical clients. But booting WinPE and live-systems works fine

I would be very grateful if we could solve that!

[albrecht]

(2019-07-21 20:01)albrecht Wrote:  Thank you NikiZe for your quick answear and sry for my late reply,

It was also my guess that the NIC Drives are not supported. For this reason I have installed the Bootimage on the Computer that I would like to sanboot later. Then I cloned this Harddisk on the blank Disk of the PXE-Server.

The Question is: Do I need to search the network drivers for the PXE server or for the Client? In this case I already should have the NIC-Drives from the Client, or not?
How I can install the correct NIC-Drives? Unfortunately, I have not found a practical solution

My PXE-Server is on an ESXi-Server and consists of virtual hard disks. Is that perhaps the problem, that I installed the bootimage on a real harddisk and cloned it on a virtuell one? I only have this problem with sanboot on physical clients. But booting WinPE and live-systems works fine

I would be very grateful if we could solve that!

I looked at the thread http://forum.ipxe.org/showthread.php?tid...48#pid6648 that you give me. I read that the solution is maybe:

1) Install the driver for the new NIC (in my case intel e1000e)
2) Add the relevant entries to the cddb in the registry so that driver loads on boot
3) Disable the wfd service

Unfortunately point 2 and 3 is unclear. I can find the critical device database (cddb) in regedit but i don´t know what i have to add there. I researched a long time but found nothing

[NiKiZe]

The most critical part is generally to make sure that the driver is boot critical.
This means going in to the registry under currentcontrolset/services, finding the service (same as driver name generally) and change start to 0, which makes it start by kernel, or at least this is the best information I can find at the moment (And based on https://www.prime-expert.com/articles/a1...indows-xp/)

[albrecht]

I tried, but the same error still occurs. The screenshots shows how I tried it

before editing, the start value was 3

---

sry screenshot did not load.

in device manager I see my NIC Driver E1G6032E.sys. Then I find it in the Registry "Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\E1G60" I click on it an discover the file "Start". After doubleclick on Start I change the value from 3 to 0. But during Sanboot I have the same problem (bluescreen)

[misty]

@albrecht
I haven't got any SANBoot systems available at the moment to check, however I recall when installing Windows 8.*\10 to an iSCSI target that the NIC start value is NOT set to 0 - the system still boots fine.

If cloning an existing system, have you tried unbinding the Lightweight Filter (LWF)? See http://mistyprojects.co.uk/documents/Tin...wfplwf.htm

misty

[albrecht]

(2019-08-11 18:13)misty Wrote:  @albrecht
I haven't got any SANBoot systems available at the moment to check, however I recall when installing Windows 8.*\10 to an iSCSI target that the NIC start value is NOT set to 0 - the system still boots fine.

If cloning an existing system, have you tried unbinding the Lightweight Filter (LWF)? See http://mistyprojects.co.uk/documents/Tin...wfplwf.htm

misty

I also have unbind the Lightweight Filter (LWF) in Windows 7/8 exactly as described on the page http://mistyprojects.co.uk/documents/Tin...wfplwf.htm

But it still can not boot a cloned Image.

in memory of:

i can install Win 7/8 with WinPE on the iSCSI-Target. Then I can boot this over PXE without problems. But When I install Win 7/8 with CD and clone the installed images on the iSCSI target and tried to boot over pxe it fails with Bluescreen (Stopcode 000..7B)



It definitely has something to do with the NIC, but I can not find the cause.

[Andromeda_x]

Hello,

a small note on possible problem: if your hardware (even virtual) is quite different from hardware where the image was taken from then system might not boot and probably will BSOD.

What you need to do before taking an image -- sysprep the system.

Then when an image will get deployed to new machine (real or virtual) the system will reconfigure itself to adopt to new environment.

If the image is taken and deployed on same hardware then sysprep is not necessary but you will still end-up with computer name conflict (one of the computers will require to change it's name).

Andromeda_x

[albrecht]

(2019-09-14 00:10)Andromeda_x Wrote:  Hello,

a small note on possible problem: if your hardware (even virtual) is quite different from hardware where the image was taken from then system might not boot and probably will BSOD.

What you need to do before taking an image -- sysprep the system.

Then when an image will get deployed to new machine (real or virtual) the system will reconfigure itself to adopt to new environment.

If the image is taken and deployed on same hardware then sysprep is not necessary but you will still end-up with computer name conflict (one of the computers will require to change it's name).

Andromeda_x

hi Andromeda_x,

thank you for your help, in my case the image is taken and deployed on same hardware (so as you say it is not necessary to sysprep). But how I can change the name of PC? is it something special or a simple change of the settings?

Best regards
albrecht

[NiKiZe]

Name conflict are usually not an issue (XP and earlier complained, but not newer systems), unless you use samba shares, with that said, unique names are preferred, just change it - but that is if the same image is used on multiple machines.

[albrecht]

hm... then that doesn`t apply in this case

thank you again!