johndon Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 When booting from my DR CD my system always hangs when loading the driver for the "WIN XP promise FastTrack 376/378 Controller". It makes no difference if the driver loads from the DR CD or from a floppy using the F6 option. I had no problem reinstalling Window XP from the original Windows CD and using th F6 option to load the Promise drivers. It is only the DR CD that malfunctions this way. My system: Retrospect Pro V7.0 Windows XP Professional w/SP2 Asus SK8N motherboard with onboard promise FastTrack 378 RAID controller with RAID 0 array attached. Also had the same problem with Retrospect Pro V6.5. I had really hoped this was fixed in V7.0 but it is not! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 Thanks, I will work on reproducing this issue and report it to the engineers. Did you create the DR image using a slipstreamed XP SP2 disc? Or did you have an SP2 disk directly from Microsoft? Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johndon Posted February 12, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 Not having a Microsoft SP2 CD I did try to use a slipstreamed XP SP2 CD. Retrospect would not access it from either my CD or DVD drives. (Is this a problem?) I then copied the i386 folder from the CD to my hard drive and tried again. Retrospect then displayed an error message that the resulting CD-R image would be over 650 MB and asked if I wanted to continue or try again with different Windows installation software. I chose continue and the process of generating the DR image stopped. The log entry was “ISO image too big, can't continue”. If that is the case why offer the option to continue? I made another slipstreamed XP SP2 CD using a totally manually procedure and tried again. Same error. I ended up using a Microsoft XP SP1 CD to generate the DR image. Not the best way to do it but the only way I could make a DR CD. I do not think this is my problem. Ever since I got this computer with the Promise RAID controller (a year and a half ago) I have not been able to boot from a DR CD made on this computer. Always locks when loading the FastTrack driver. During that time period I have tried all new versions of Retrospect as they were released. In the past year and a half, on this computer, I have installed WIN XP twice, WIN 2K twice, and WIN 64 too many time to count, all with Microsoft CDs. Each of them loaded the FastTrack driver without problem. Also, I can boot to the recovery console with any of the Microsoft CD's without problem. The only time my system hangs is with a Retrospect DR CD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted February 12, 2005 Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 I would suggest calling Promise tech support, they may be familiar with the issue and/or may be able to help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johndon Posted February 12, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 I know it may well be tunnel vision on my part but I am very suspicious the problem is in how Retrospect builds the DR CD. My CD's for WINXP SP1, WINXP SP2, WIN2K, and 4 different builds of WIN64 all boot without problem and load the Promise RAID driver without hanging. As best I recall once, long ago, I did try booting on this computer with a DR CD made on my old computer without RAID and I was successful. I just think it would be very unwise to use the old DR CD to try to recover from a real disaster. Also, that old DR CD is long gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted February 14, 2005 Report Share Posted February 14, 2005 Hi If you did not use a bootable XP SP2 CD to build the disaster recovery image the disk will fail at some point. In your case it happens to fail at the driver stage. I'm still testing here with a promise FastTrack TX 133 but everything looks good so far. Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johndon Posted February 14, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2005 Quote: If you did not use a bootable XP SP2 CD to build the disaster recovery image the disk will fail at some point. Nate: Since I can build a DR CD with my XP SP 1 CD but Retrospect says the image will be too large if I use my SP 2 slipstreamed CD, how do I determin what I can remove from XP 2 CD and still make a functioning DR CD? Thanks John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johndon Posted February 14, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2005 Quote: Hi If you did not use a bootable XP SP2 CD to build the disaster recovery image the disk will fail at some point. In your case it happens to fail at the driver stage. Thanks Nate Nate: PART 2 I know using an old operating system CD to build a DR CD will cause problems at some point but I do not believe that is source of my DR CD hanging when it loads the Promise RAID driver. With Retrospect 6.5 I was able to build DR CDs with both XP SP1 and SP2 (at different times when each was my my operating system). Both DR CDs hung when booting as they were loading the Promise RAID driver. My Promise RAID driver is V 1.0.1.37, the latest version posted on their WEB site. I have found two DR CDs that were not made on my current computers. Both DR CDs were made by Retrospect 6.5, but different builds. I know they can not be used to restore my current computer, I only used them to see how far they would go in booting my computer. With both CDs I loaded the Promise RAID driver with F6 and both time my current computer booted all the way to the screen that shows my hard drive configuration and inquired where I wanted to install WINXP. The screen also said something to the effect that my hard drive was on a FASTTX2K [MBR]. At that point I chose to exit the installation. In neither case was there a hang when the Promise RAID driver was loaded. Does this mean Retrospect is building the DR CD incorrectly on my current computer? Is there any way to inspect the DR CD to find the problem? Thanks John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johndon Posted March 17, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2005 Quote: Hi If you did not use a bootable XP SP2 CD to build the disaster recovery image the disk will fail at some point. In your case it happens to fail at the driver stage. I'm still testing here with a promise FastTrack TX 133 but everything looks good so far. Thanks Nate Nate: With build 265 I am now able to make a DR CD based on WINXP PRO SP2. This new DR CD also hangs when loading the Promise RAID driver. As I stated before, this same (Fast Trak 378) driver loads without problem when I boot from any Microsoft Windows CD (also the slipstreamed SP 2 CD). It is only when I boot from the Retrospect DR CD made on this computer that loading the Promise driver hangs my system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mauricev Posted May 11, 2005 Report Share Posted May 11, 2005 Quote: If you did not use a bootable XP SP2 CD to build the disaster recovery image the disk will fail at some point. In your case it happens to fail at the driver stage. Will fail, or may fail? I just did it on a Dell laptop and when it gets to installing drivers, it did appear to get confused, but it didn't fail. It eventually did get the Ethernet driver installed and once it had that, I was able to complete the restore and all is well..so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted May 20, 2005 Report Share Posted May 20, 2005 Hi The problem with promise drivers and Disaster Recovery CD creation will be resoved in an update to Retrospect 7. I don't have a release date but it is on the way in the near future. Thanks nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMinNJ Posted May 24, 2005 Report Share Posted May 24, 2005 I just created the disaster recovery CD with version 7.0 on my XP Home SP2 machine. I used the XP cd that came with my PC...it created the .iso file. From what your telling me in this thread, even though I follow the Retrospect screen instructions TO THE LETTER this DR image/CD is no good ..as the CD I used was not SP2??? The DR CD I created is in fact SP1...the restored system I get back from DR will be SP1?? Yikes!! So what your recommending is to follow the slipstream intstructions which include using a the shareware tool ISOBuster ??? I thank you for the honest answer.. but I must admit the SP1/SP2 issues should be built into the product or instructions for making DR CD. It should prompt for the SP direcectory and take care of this. One of the reasons I purchased the software is that it presented an easy DR CD making interface... I can't help but feel a bit cheated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMinNJ Posted May 24, 2005 Report Share Posted May 24, 2005 It is possible that the XP CD I have is SP2... is there a way to tell by looking at something within the CD? Sorry if this is an obvious question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted May 30, 2005 Report Share Posted May 30, 2005 Hi Is youre CD a recovery CD from the PC manufacturer? On my Dell recovery CD it says SP2 on the disk. A recovery disk from the PC manufacturer will do pretty much the same thing the Retrospect DR CD will. Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMinNJ Posted May 31, 2005 Report Share Posted May 31, 2005 I looked at my recovery CD...it is SP2 so its seems I'm OK. Still if SP3 were to come out my DR procedure would be in question it seems. Can't one just boot and install any level of the OS, then install Retrospect, find a catalog on tape, and blow over the whole thing ?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted June 1, 2005 Report Share Posted June 1, 2005 Hi It depends on SP3. XP SP2 was a _huge_ change to the OS. These changes were so sweeping that we are now stuck with a fairly tedious DR process. In the past, service packs did not cause this kind of problem so DR was much easier. Hopefully future service packs won't cause similar problems. Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jelenko Posted June 5, 2005 Report Share Posted June 5, 2005 Quote: Can't one just boot and install any level of the OS, then install Retrospect, find a catalog on tape, and blow over the whole thing ?? Simple answer: No. Even if you don't use Retrospect [e.g., use the ntbackup built into Windows 2000/XP], you have to insure that the system is at the same service pack level as the backup set. An alternative to disaster recovery is to use disk imaging applications. But, these each have their own pros and cons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nembot Posted June 7, 2005 Report Share Posted June 7, 2005 OK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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