Introduction to General clone system for Windows

Introduction to General clone system for Windows

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Here, Windows refers to Microsoft's Windows 2000/XP/2003 (unless otherwise stated in this article, all windows refer to these three systems). The so-called universal cloning, universal cloning, also known as the encapsulation system, a Windows system is installed on a machine. After a series of technical processing, the system is cloned using the clone software, this allows the clone system to be restored on any target PC. As a matter of fact, so far, I have never met a real universal Cloning System, and even a good general Cloning System will fail. Theoretically, it is impossible to implement a truly omnipotent clone. We will discuss the reasons in detail in the subsequent descriptions.

Recently, in many forums (Dragon empire, worry-free startup, sysoft space-time, DOS Alliance), we have seen some people concerned with basic knowledge about Windows universal cloning. Many people are concerned about Windows universal cloning, I only know what the S & R & S software means and what the S & R & S means, and what contribution it makes to the development of general cloning is not enough. More people do not know what issues need to be solved for general cloning, and even some people do not know some basic concepts. This kind of lack of understanding about General cloning is quite common. As a result, General cloning is not a complex technology that many people have become mysterious and even become a secret, this makes the majority of users feel that it is beyond reach. In fact, with my own understanding and understanding, the general clone manufacturing principle is not complicated, but if we leave the S & R & S Manufacturing software and implement it manually, this article only focuses on the principle and technical details. If you are interested, you can further analyze the source on the basis of this article. In fact, it is only through your own efforts to find its essence.

1. technical problems to be solved by General cloning

Many people know that an unhandled Windows system is directly restored to another machine, and the most likely situation is the blue screen or repeated restart. So what are the causes of blue screen and restart? In fact, this is the most basic technical problem to be solved by the General clone system.

1.1 Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) in Windows J

We know that NT is a kernel-based hierarchical design of the operating system (in fact, Unix-like operating systems), the earliest NT System is supported including i386 (Intel and AMD platforms) operating systems on different hardware platforms, such as Alpha, and iSCSI, are designed in a hierarchical manner. The underlying hardware abstraction layer (hardware abstract layer, or Hal) it is directly related to hardware. The top management only deals with the next layer and no longer has direct access to hardware (this is also the main reason why software access to hardware is not allowed in Windows NT ). The Hal layer is equivalent to the current Java Virtual Machine and the physical layer in the OSI Layer 7 model defined by the ISO organization. Even on the i386 platform, it is clear that the hardware used by a P3 machine differs greatly from that of P4 machines, that is, they need to use different kernels for Windows, that is, different Hal.

With these basic concepts, we can start to introduce the so-called power mode in general clone manufacturing. In fact, the power mode problem is Hal, it is also called a computer type problem (because it directly corresponds to the computer type item in the Device Manager ). In our daily PC, the most commonly used computer types include:
Standard PC
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC (ACPI)
ACPI uniprocessor PC
ACPI multiprocessor PC

For how to understand the differences between these computer types, please refer to this article by friends of the Dragon empire Forum wooden bird: http://nufans.net/dvbbs/dispbbs... P; id = 823 & page = 1. In addition, you can refer to the article "Hal supported by Windows 2000/XP/2003 operating systems) and the relationship between related kernel files to learn more about the differences between different computer types and how to replace the computer types.

Basically, the four Hal types listed above are compatible with standard PC (standard computer), and if the wrong Hal type is used to start the target computer, the system may also start normally, but some functions may be lost. For example, if a computer supporting ACPI is started in standard PC mode, the power cannot be automatically turned off when it is turned off. Therefore, how to correctly select the Hal type of the target computer has become an important topic in the history of General clone system development, this historical development process is also briefly introduced in the above-mentioned wooden bird article (in fact, hyne, chenall, and Native changes were initially discussed in the carefree Forum ). The history of solving the Hal problem goes through these stages:

1) install the system in standard PC mode and manually modify the computer type.

This method is to manually change the computer type to the standard PC before making the clone system to obtain the best compatibility of the clone system (the IDE controller will also be modified to the standard dual-channel, which will be detailed later ), then it is restored to the target computer, but two standard PCs appear in the computer type of the Device Manager, and then manually change one of them to the type suitable for the target computer (which depends on manual judgment ), the disadvantage of this method is that the hardware driver needs to be searched again after the restart, resulting in a large amount of ghost hardware in the system.

2) manual judgment and manual selection.

This stage is represented by hyne, chenall, and dead-sex non-modification (which I have come into contact with) by using batch processing or vbprogram, when the clone system is started, a selection menu appears to allow users to select the Hal type suitable for their computers. As to how to determine the Hal type used by their computers, it is basically based on the experience of the installer. This method avoids the secondary hardware search process. As for more advantages, I do not know much about it.

3) Use ta. EXE for automatic judgment, manual confirmation, and secondary modification of the boot menu.

This method mainly comes from the innovation of the dead, he invented the target computing engine analysis program ta.exe In the XP Embeded tool, and the result of using cpuz to determine the number of CPUs, so as to comprehensively determine the possible Hal type of the target computer. Of course, this judgment method is not completely accurate, and errors may occur. Therefore, manual confirmation, boot menu control, and other supplementary measures will occur, I think the most perfect product in this phase is S & R & S 5.5 Build 1030.

4) use winpe to determine the computer type.

This method has been mentioned in the wooden bird article, so I cannot introduce it too much. However, it is certain that this method is not popular at all.

5) use the ntldr of Longhorn to automatically determine and select the computer type.

This method is described in an article published by the netizen "Microsoft cracking Center" in the carefree launch forum. This article is widely spread on the Internet, the article is also easy to understand. I will not introduce it in detail. If you are interested, search for it. In short, it is found that the ntldr of Longhorn has a new parameter, that is,/detecthal (in Boot. this parameter can be used to automatically determine and select the computer type. Because the source is Microsoft, the result is accurate. Basically, using Longhorn technology to determine the right Hal is the most perfect solution at present. This method is basically used in the S & R & S 9. x versions that are not modified.

1.2 massstorage device driver problems

First, explain what the massstorage device is. The so-called massstorage device is simply a hard disk controller. Its segments include PATA (traditional hard disk controller), SATA, raid, and SCSI. In fact, S & R & S, which is not modified, means SATA & raid & SCSI. In short, it refers to the categories of storage devices that windows may install on. We generally refer to them as massstorage.

Speaking of the massstorage problem of General cloning, it should be said that this problem was first caused by the continuous promotion of SATA serial hard disks. In the early stages of general cloning, Sata hard disks were not very stream-oriented, this problem is not serious because all PATA (IDE) controllers are compatible with standard dual-channel ide controllers, therefore, when cloning, you only need to change the IDE controller of the source machine to a standard dual channel. But obviously, Sata is not compatible with the standard dual-channel. Therefore, when the cloned system is restored on the SATA hard disk and restarted, a blue screen will appear (the error message is inaccessable_boot_device, is an inaccessible Startup Device ). In fact, this problem has been around for a long time. When installing Windows NT, loading the drive on the drive disk of the storage device by pressing F6 in textmode is the earliest cause. The reason is very simple. Windows NT no longer relies on the BIOS to access the hard disk, but uses the underlying driver. If the corresponding driver is not loaded, Windows will not find the hard disk, windows cannot be started without a hard disk. While DOS accesses the hard disk through bios, which is also the main reason why dos can access SATA, raid, and SCSI hard disks While Windows cannot.

After clarifying the cause of this problem, we will briefly discuss the solution, which is actually very simple: it is to collect as many massstorage device drivers as possible, and then load them into the system in one time using the Windows method, so that there will be no problem that the hard disk cannot be found (in fact, Windows itself does the same, you can carefully observe the installation process of Windows NT. On the textmode installation interface, you will see that it loads a series of drivers, among them, there are many massstorage devices not available on the local machine, but Microsoft itself cannot integrate all the massstorage device drivers in the installation program, so it provides the F6 method to load additional drivers through a floppy disk ). What is windows? Basically, the driver file is copied to the % WINDIR % "System32" DRIVERS directory, and then the registry is modified to write the corresponding service and hardware ID of the driver into the appropriate registry key. The written content can be obtained by analyzing the INF file of the corresponding driver. Therefore, rui users have also written an inf2reg program to automatically generate the corresponding content to be added to the registry according to the driver's INF file. In fact, the writing of the driver's INF file is strictly standardized. from Microsoft's tecknet, you can find a lot of related content. If you are interested, you can search for and study it on your own.

Obviously, it is impossible for us to collect drivers from all the massstorage devices based on our individual capabilities. At the same time, the storage technology is constantly evolving, and new hardware is also emerging, this is one of the reasons why generic cloning cannot be omnipotent. Another reason is that there may be incompatibility between these drivers. incompatibility of the drivers may cause direct crashes during simultaneous loading, for example, incompatibility between intelide and viaide, this is the second reason why cloning cannot be omnipotent. It is also the most important and difficult to solve. Currently, the S & R & S software running in DOS is being explored to solve this problem, the implementation principle is to load only the corresponding driver suitable for the target machine in DOS Based on the hardware of the target machine, so as to effectively avoid incompatibility of the driver. Of course, this product is still in the testing stage. If you are interested, you can visit the S & R & S encapsulation area of the Dragon empire forum to download the product for testing.

The latest version of acronis true image provides the universal restore function. After cloning is restored, it is similar to the F6 function used to load the User-Defined driver during Windows installation, this should be a good way to solve general cloning and recovery. Of course, it requires more people with lofty ideals to study and promote it.

In addition to the driver problem of the massstorage device, the new type of CPU, USB keyboard, mouse and other device drivers should also be solved in this way, such as amd K8 CPU driver problems. Compared with S & R & S, the ASR Tools Package software released by wooden bird has the biggest difference in the integrated driver, therefore, the integrated driver in its packaging software is far better than the early software of S & R & S. Of course, it is a very close comrade-in-arms because the wooden bird and dead nature are not changed, the new version of S & R & S software also uses the drive package extracted by the wooden bird. Therefore, essentially, there is no big difference between the two packages. Of course, there are some subtle differences. I personally prefer using ASR tools to create a general clone system, but the procedure is relatively cumbersome.

Because the clone system needs to integrate a large number of drivers before making the system, after cloning and installation, these driver files and their corresponding registry keys will not be automatically cleared by the system, however, as the system starts every time and the compatibility between drivers becomes a problem, cloning the system brings great risks and consumes a lot of system resources, this is also the main reason why many people do not advocate secondary encapsulation of clone systems. In response to this situation, under the guidance of the wooden bird, I compiled the asrclean program to work with the ASR Tools Package software to clean up the driver after the installation is complete (also thanks to the massstorage driver method currently used by the detection system provided by Rui friends ). In principle, there should be no hidden risks in the secondary encapsulation of the asrclean system.

Basically, the two problems mentioned above are the two core technical issues that need to be solved by the General clone system. Other problems are basically minor issues and do not affect the overall situation.

According to my recent installation experience, the integration of a large number of massstorage storage device drivers in cloning can cause compatibility problems on some machines and cause clone recovery failure, one of the failures I encountered was that, on a Tsinghua Ziguang notebook using the SIS chipset, the system was continuously restarted on the blue screen after cloning and recovery was completed, my solution is to extract the failed system registry file and load the Registry File Using Reg load on another Windows machine, use asrclean to clear out other redundant massstorage device drivers except siside (asrclean 1.1 supports this feature, but you need to customize the cleanup list. For detailed usage, see help ), copy the system file back, and the recovery is successful. I want to use this method for your reference.