New Dell Precision Booting to Live CD of Universal Restore
This new Dell Precision 3620 with RAID 1 doesn't finish booting; depending on the CD/DVD.
I find that I need to select the UEFI CD/DVD drive which is displayed in the boot menu when there's a disk inserted. Then it boots. Well, sort of:
The Universal Restore disk (WINPE version) will boot up to the point of "Starting Windows" and then freezes with that message on the screen. All disk activity stops. I've left it for hours just to confirm. Safe Boot is OFF.
I need to be able to use the True Image part and the Universal Restore part.
I have been able to get some disks to boot fully for Imaging, but none that show the 5-item menu with Universal Restore.
So, this does NOT appear to be a hardware problem......


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OK. I'll try that.
In the meantime, I have a WINPE UINVERSAL Restore disk. It will boot on an older computer and will display the nice colored menu with 5? items including True Image and Universal restore.
The same disk, when used on the Dell Precision mentioned above, does not display the colorful menu but, rather, displays a list of 3 items to select from in a command line format. There is (as I recall):
1) Universal Restore
2) True Image?
3) System information.
If I select Universal Restore, the only thing that shows up on the screen is the interface for finding and saving drivers. But there is no option for Restoring!
I'm wondering what I'm looking at and why?
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OK. I found the RAID driver and incorporated it into the CD build.
Still looks pretty much the same. I think maybe my "mental model" of how things work together and in what sequence is an issue:
I rather envision having a "old computer" disk image on perhaps a USB hard drive OR maybe that image has already been put onto a hard drive.
Next, I want to introduce this into new hardware.
My notion has always been that the disk image would be "restored" into the new computer with a restore process (that may include some drivers for the new computer).
This process now appears to want the "old image" hard drive to already be installed in the new computer by itself. Because there is an adjustment process that will run but there is no "restore" as in "transfer" process that I can see.
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The old computer is booting in legacy BIOS (CSM) mode and your new computer is booting in UEFI mode. The black window with 3 items you are seeing is the Acronis UEFI boot menu. To push or take images, you want to be using the "Acronis" item and once it fully loads into memory, you should see the familiar Acronis menu you're used to. The "universal restore" option is only for generalzing an image so it can be pushed to other hardware and it allows you to add drivers during the generalization process. Your new machine, since it's a dell should allow you to boot into UEFI or legacy bios though. Generally on Dells, when you reboot, start pressing F12 to get to the manual boot options. The first options for USB boot are going to be legacy/bios (assuming you have this turned on in the bios menu already). The second options are goinog to be UEFI usb boot. However, by default, your system sounds like it is configured to boot to UEFI so this normal.
As for the RAID driver thing. You take your original image of the old machine. You push that image to the new machine. You then use universal restore on the new machine with the pushed image - most likely it will not boot. You then use universal restore to generalize the machine and push the RAID drivers during the process - hopefully it boots after that.
HOWEVER, this is what most people don't understand because of the changes with legacy/bios/csm and newer UEFI systems - they are not all backward compatible. Ideally, you don't want to push a legacy bios image to a UEFI system - some motherboards support this (the Dells do if configured correctly), but you are not taking full advantage of the new hardware's capabilities with UEFI and GPT disks. Honestly, if you have a new Dell, you want to build it up from scratch, reload your apps, and then import just your user data from your old machine. Once you have it fully configured the way you like it, take a nice "base" image of it so that you have a fallback point and then go from there. I don't recommend importing an old system image onto a new machine because of the bios differences unless you absolutely have to. In the end, you will be better off with a fresh build on your new system and start taking imagees of it from then on. In the future, if all of your systems are UEFI - then by all means go ahead and reuse images, but you don't want ot mix and match the old legacy stuff with the new UEFI stuff.
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OK. Those suggestions are appreciated! It surely helps me understand the process.
Perhaps it's just a matter of perspective but I was a little confused by "generalization process". Later, the description of the adjustment process seems more like a "making specific" process. No?
I now have Acronis Linux CDs that will boot from the "UEFI" list that contain both the ATI and UR. So, it looks like we're good to go.
My intent here is to do exactly what you caution against. I can always build from scratch if need be but I really want to avoid it in one case here. It appears that the Dell system is not GPT even though it's a new system with UEFI(bios) and not BIOS(bios). So maybe that's a good thing. If it doesn't work out, I can always fall back and build from scratch. What might happen? That might be good to know.
As far as booting is concerned, I now have a stack of CDs. The Dell boot menu looks like this:
Legacy Boot:
- CD/DVD
- USB
etc.
UEFI Boot:
- UEFI: [name of device] <<< this only shows up if there's a CD in the drive and usually does.
None of the Acronis CDs will boot from the Legacy Boot list. They only boot from the UEFI list. Of course, we may not know exactly what "UEFI" means in this case as it's used in too many strange ways by whichever company. Illumination on this point has proven to be difficult.
Of the Acronis CDs that will boot, only the Linux-based ones will work. All of the WINPE-based CDs do "boot" but hang up at "Starting Windows". That familiar legend stays on the screen forever and the CD lights go out and there's no further activity. So, it appears that WINPE media aren't in the cards unless I missed a critical step in building them. I did build them on a different Windows 7 computer.... If WINPE is somehow important to be using then at least for this computer I'm stuck. I'll just have to use Linux - which is fine. Is it my mistake or a disk configuration problem or a "brick wall" built into the computer perhaps? I also have another Linux-based CD (not Acronis) that hangs at "loading initrd" just after "loading Linux". That seems the same type of "brick wall".
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There's a lot going on with this one :)
Before you do anything, if you can boot with any Acronis Media (Linux or otherwise), I would recommend taking a full disk image of the new system "as is". This will give you something to revert to if you ever want to restore your system exactly like it came from the manufacturer. You'll probably never need it again, but just in case (especially for licensing purposes if you run into trouble down the road) it's good to have.
I have an older Dell E series bios in front of me to look at so hopefully this helps. Boot into your BIOS (F2 at startup) and verify these (they may be in slightly different locations if the BIOS are different)
1) Settings >>> General >>> Boot Sequence what do you have listed as the preferred boot option (Legacy or UEFI)?. I'm guessing UEFI since this is a new machine, but based off your information above, I'm not sure:
"Legacy Boot:
- CD/DVD
- USB
etc.
UEFI Boot:
- UEFI: [name of device] <<< this only shows up if there's a CD in the drive and usually does."
. If so, by default, your system would always try to use UEFI boot methods before failing over to Legacy (BIOS/CSM) - hence why you got the UEFI selection prompt with your Acronis bootable media. You can still Legacy boot your CD or USB of Acronis bootable recovery by selecting the Legacy Boot CD/DVD or USB option in the menu you mention above - it really doesn't matter which one you use to take or restore images with Acronis as the offline media is capable of either on 64-bit machines.
Keeping in mind that you plan to push your old image to the new system, when you push your old image to the machine, if the image is of a machine that only has Legacy BIOS support, you want to set the new Dell to Legacy Mode to match. However, this will disable UEFI functionality so you won't be able to UEFI boot with Acronis media or other newer applications unless you speficially go back into the bios and switch it again. Would you need to, probably not, but possibly for a tool that only has UEFI boot support. Once you're done with the tool, you'd switch back to "Legacy" again so that your machine could boot as switching will cause a boot failure until it's reverted back.
2) Settings >>> System Configruation >>> SATA Operations what do you have turned on (AHCI is recommended and most likely seleceted already; however, your previous system may have something else like RAID, ATA, or evn IDE which will cause a bluescreen when you push the old image to the new system unless you change this to match the older system. Alternatively, you will need to use Universal Restore to "Generalize" the image once it's pushed) if you keep it set as AHCI in the bios, assuming your old machine is not already AHCI (if it is, then no worries, just make sure it's AHCI now)
If this is currently set to anything other than AHCI, that may explain why the WinPE is taking so long to boot. I've found that when it is set to RAID that there is a 500MB memory limit the system can allocate for booting and Acronis needs than the system can allocate in RAID mode so switching the BIOS to AHCI is necessary in some cases.
In general, WinPE takes a bit longer to boot up so give it some time. It should boot the same as the Linux disk though - I've seen it take 2-3 minutes to load though, where the Linux one is usually under a minute. Also make sure you built the WinPE using the same hardware (x64 sytsem to build if you are booting on an x64 system now - don't build WinPE on a 32bit system and try to boot it on a 64bit system for the purposes of using Acronis as Acronis only supports 64-bit PE as of ATIH2015).
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I also have a Dell Precision T3620. My image was created with TI2016 using a Dell T3610 (one version back) and I have the BIOS set to AHCI because that's how I built the image. My only problem is the network adapter doesn't appear to be working with the standard TI2016 media. I went through the process of creating a custom cd, imported the Dell network drivers and the system will boot fine with the cd I made but it still doesn't have any network options like I had with the original CD. I have to manually configure the network and specify an IP address and I don't see the network options button on the WinPE boot cd I made. Any suggestions? TIA
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I'm in a dialog with Dell right now on this. When asked "is your system SATA set for AHCI?" I'm not able to answer the question because the HDs are set up in RAID. Further research indicates:
"RAID has also become an operating mode in SATA along with AHCI and IDE. In terms of features, it basically exposes the same feature set that is available in AHCI making them identical in single disk applications."
http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-ahci-and-raid/
So, this is somewhat encouraging but not completely definitive.
In the meantime, I have abandoned bringing this computer up based on an image of an older machine. The setup process I was trying to avoid turns out to not be such a big deal after all. Yet, I'd still like to be able to run common live CDs for testing, etc. and to have a backup image ready.
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Paulito wrote:I also have a Dell Precision T3620. My image was created with TI2016 using a Dell T3610 (one version back) and I have the BIOS set to AHCI because that's how I built the image. My only problem is the network adapter doesn't appear to be working with the standard TI2016 media. I went through the process of creating a custom cd, imported the Dell network drivers and the system will boot fine with the cd I made but it still doesn't have any network options like I had with the original CD. I have to manually configure the network and specify an IP address and I don't see the network options button on the WinPE boot cd I made. Any suggestions? TIA
Hmmm, not sure about this one. I have created a WinPE version of ATIH 2016 using Win10 ADK and seems to work for just about all NIC's but there's always an oddball one. Try grabbing the Dell WinPE drivers from http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/enterprise-client/w/wiki/5029.winpe-5-0-driver-cab and adding those to your WIM during the Acronis media build, or using DISMGUI or the DISM commands after you have your .WIM
Add and Remove Drivers to an Offline Windows Image
You can also grab the full T3610 driver .cab, use 7zip to extract it and then find the NIC drivers in there and slip those in.
Dell Command | Deploy Precision T3610 Windows 10 Driver Pack (you want to grab the T3610-win10-A01-384T1.CAB)
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Fred Marshall wrote:I'm in a dialog with Dell right now on this. When asked "is your system SATA set for AHCI?" I'm not able to answer the question because the HDs are set up in RAID. Further research indicates:
"RAID has also become an operating mode in SATA along with AHCI and IDE. In terms of features, it basically exposes the same feature set that is available in AHCI making them identical in single disk applications."
http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-ahci-and-raid/So, this is somewhat encouraging but not completely definitive.
In the meantime, I have abandoned bringing this computer up based on an image of an older machine. The setup process I was trying to avoid turns out to not be such a big deal after all. Yet, I'd still like to be able to run common live CDs for testing, etc. and to have a backup image ready.
RAID is an option. The key though, is making sure that whatever the setting is in your base system (the one you take an image with), it is set the same way for your deployed sysetem (the one you push the image back to). If you're imagaing and restoring to the same system, this is usually not a probelm.
However, I've found that when set as RAID, the Linux boot media may not work because some bios limit the amount of RAM allocated for pre-boot ramdisk to only 500MB and Acronis needs more. If this is the case, hopefully WinPE will help. Using the suggestion about the dell driver.cab I just posted above, grab the one for your system as well and extract the contents. Then, when you create your WinPE, you want to incorporate your RAID controller and your NIC into your WinPE in order to be able to properly take images and/or restore them again.
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