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re: Question about 'Making Sure the Correct HAL is Installed'
Tuesday, January 1, 2002 at 6:20 pm
Windows 2000 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by David Evans
(2 messages posted)
The simple answer is:
Make an image of the drive as it is now. Norton's Ghost program
is good for this. (Cost is $13+ship for the Systemworks Pro 2002
OEM version (see www.pricewatch.com); the requirements for using
the OEM version are reasonably easy to fulfill) Save the image to
either a second hard disk (faster), or to CDROM. Experiment with
getting it to the point you want. If the system gets screwed-up,
restore the image.
As an example of this, when I was doing the work discussed in my
original posting I connected another disk to the machine and made
an image of the original drive contents. I then disconnected the
extra drive. Then I tried lots of different things, including a
complete re-load of win2k after formatting the drive. Once I
found a process that appeared to work as best as I was able to
accomplish in the time available, I reconnected the extra drive
and reloaded the original drive contents, rebooted, and followed
the process that I had determined to produce the "best" results.
Having an easily restorable backup _really_ makes the entire
process of getting windows to do something close to what you want
both easier and dramatically less stressful.
NOTES:
A) I always have Norton's ghost program split the image files
into 650 MB chunks so that I can put them on CD if I
desire.
B) With Ghost 2001 it does not deal well with large _content_
NTFS drives (not large capacity, large _used_ capacity (>
approx. 12-15GB). In several portions of the program it
will complain, show an error, etc. In order to get it to
work properly, one must actually say _NO_ to one of the
questions about there being and error, and do you want to
proceed (personally, I consider this to be a _MAJOR_ bug,
but Symantec doesn't appear to care). On the other hand,
once I happened to figure out the need for the above, I was
able to get it to perform to my needs.
C) I have not used Ghost 2002, so I do not know if the above
problem has been fixed.
As to the motherboard swap, it will probably work. You may need to go
through the "upgrade" process more than once.
Again, most important: make a backup.
Example:
After spending about a month loading win2k and all associated
applications onto someone's machine (royal pain in the butt as there
were several places where one application or update or driver _had_ to
be loaded prior to another or system will not work. No, this was not
because he was using some outrageous configuration). So after
installing everything, and getting it working, I made a ghost image.
Now on the other systems that I have installed win2k I just load the
image onto a fresh disk. With win2k, depending on the HW changes you
_may_ immediately have to boot off off the CDROM and go through the
"upgrade" process, or you may not. However, once I was done I found
that win2k had reset the HALL to the "Standard PC" HALL, and I had to
go through the "upgrade" process _again_ once I had installed all the
drivers, changed the windows and application licenses, etc. in order
to get it to pick the right HALL.
NOTE: This method is even more helpful on older versions (win98se) of
Windows. On win98se I rarely have had to even put the CD into the
drive (note: I store a copy of the .cab files on the hard disk, so
when they are needed they are available. Having timed how long it
takes to do a win98se install from re-partitioned hard disk to having
_all_ of the net updates installed for all applications, I know that
it takes 24 man-hours (yeap, that is with a T1 line connection, not a
dial-up). Loading a base image with most/all software already on it,
including changing licenses, getting all the net-updates released
after the image was made, etc. takes maybe 2 hours or so. That is a
dramatic improvement.
The only catch that I have experienced with win98se is that you do
_not_ reboot the first several times that the OS says that it has
updated something and thinks is wants to reboot. If you do choose to
reboot that first time instead of going through all the updates at
once, the OS will forget that it has an IDE controller, and you will
not be able to access the CDROM drive, and sometimes the disk. In
this case, you are better off just starting over from the base image.
NOTE: (again) Not rebooting every time the OS asks during an upgrade
or HW update has become a standard operating procedure (SOP) for me.
Thus, you _may_ need to do that with win2k also, but I have not tried
doing it _without_ using that SOP.
Dave
On Tuesday, January 1, 2002 at 4:11 pm, John Terry wrote:
>I have two additional questions.
>
>1.) I have a dual boot WinME/Win2k machine with a Win2K installation uses the Standard
>Computer HAL because the mainboard bios was not fully ACPI compliant when Win2K
was
>first installed.
>
>I have since upgraded the bios and want to "upgrade" the HAL to ACPI.
>
>Since machine is dual boot WinME/Win2K, if I proceed to upgrade the Win2K HAL as
>described by booting from the Win2K Setup disk, will the program upgrade the Win2K
>installation without disrupting the WinME section and the dual boot function.
>
>2.) If I want to switch (upgrade) the motherboad maintaining the same hard drive
>boot disks, will the system start-up with the new motherboard and allow me to upgrade
>the HAL and complete a motherboard switch without the need to reinstall applications?
>
>Thanks
>J Terry
>
>On Wednesday, December 26, 2001 at 8:14 pm, David Evans wrote:
>
>I had a similar problem with win2k not controlling power (e.g. It would tell the
>user
>to shut the machine off instead of doing so itself).
>
>Going through the pseudo-upgrade process changed the HAL and has fixed that
>problem. It has not fixed a problem with adding more memory. A question about
>which I will post in a different sub thread.
>
>NOTE: At least for me getting the setup program to perform an "Upgrade" process
>was non intuitive.
>The setup program first asks if I want to Repair or Install. It is necessary to
>"Install"
>in the first question, not repair. Then the setup program once again searches the
>drive and identifies that there is a win2k OS already installed. It _again_ asks
>if you
>want to install or Repair. To this _second_ question about repairing is when you
>tell
>it to repair. If you tell it the first time, it does not actually do what you want
>(i.e. after
>multiple times through my HAL was not changed when "Repairing" from the first
>question.). It should be noted that the word "Upgrade" was not used by the setup
>program at any time until _after_ all choices are already made!
>
>This pseudo-upgrade appears to not have any significant impact on the operation
>of
>other programs already installed on the machine without the need to do anything
>extra on my part. Please note that this was the "Upgrade" process, not the complete
>re-install. The complete re-install explicitly states on-screen that all of your
>configuration and "My Documents" directories will be wiped.
>
>
>On the other hand I _always_ recommend that you make a backup prior to making
>significant changes.
>
>Dave
>
>
>On Wednesday, November 21, 2001 at 1:31 am, harpua wrote:
>I have a few questions about the HAL on Windows 2000:
>
>I believe I have a problem with APM: my computer will not turn itself off when I
>
>shutdown. It is a dual boot system, and will shut down fine in Win98. Therefore,
>
>the BIOS is working fine.
>
>Question #1:
>Should I search the website/contact technical support of the computer manufacturer,
>
>the motherboard manufacturer, or Microsoft to determine if I should upgrade my HAL?
>
>
>
>Question #2:
>If I do have to upgrade (i.e., reinstall, according to the instructions of this
>article),
>will backing up my registry and reloading it afterwards make my programs work so
>
>I don't have to reinstall them?
>
>Question #3:
>I have trouble with my floppy drive: everytime I try to read a floopy disk, I get
>
>the following message:
>
>"A:/ not accessible.
>
>The floppy disk controller reported an error that is not recognized by the floppy
>
>disk driver."
>
>Could this also be resolved my reinstalling a new, correct HAL?
>
>My thanks to anyone who can help.
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 |  | |  | re: Question about 'Making Sure the Correct HAL is Installed' (David Evans: Tue, Jan 1, 2002, 6:20 pm) |
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