Hotplugging coldclone support to a running bootcd

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We all know version 4 is out of beta and has several improvements over version 3.x. But version 4 is entirely hotclone based. Although it works great most of the time, there are cases that preferably need to be coldcloned. Building custom coldclone bootcd’s is not really science and was described already several years ago. That is just a matter of adding the files from the free standalone version and applying some registry patches.

This little tool is not science either, but merely a different approach towards a custom bootcd. This is a handy little app that will let you attach and load converter version 3.0.3 (the last version supporting coldclone) to any (almost) running windows preinstallation livecd. No need to have a custom buildt coldclone cd, no need for pebuilder plugins, no need for winbuilder scripts, or any similar strategy for that sake. You can grab a standard minimal recovery cd for vista or 2008, or an older bartpe bootcd of either xpsp2/xpsp3 or w2k3, and it will work in hotplugged coldclone mode.

What does it do?

There are 2 batch scripts included that collects the required files from an installation or extracts the files from the installer. It saves the files in a directory named “VMware-Converter-3.0.3”. Copy this directory to the root of a disk that will be accessible from the running bootcd. Also put the file “Converter303_Coldclone_Loader.exe” into the same directory and execute it from there.

The loader will patch the registry with all necessary entries as well as installing the 2 required services on the running preinstallation system. The loader works in such a “portable” way because of a registry-patching routine that assumes one known top-directory and patches according to varying driveletters for that disk.

The tool will generate desktop and startmenu shortcuts in your PE shell. There are two options; coldclone and hotclone mode. The hotclone mode was merely added just for the sake of having the “Configure Machine” as an option (which is disabled in coldclone mode). It has buildt-in protection against accidental execution in non-PE environments.

Supported OS’s:

32-bit xpsp2 and up to server 2008. Note, this is for the loader and not for converter itself.

Requirements:

Have the collected files on a writeable storage medium with correct directory structure.

Coldclone over wireless, all hotplugged.

It is not a problem to transfer it over a wireless even if you don’t have the stack buildt onto your bootcd. Yes it will be slooow, but possible. What we do is hotplug vmware player or workstation, just as we added converter. Here is a link to the needed tool with explanation; http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=6924

This way we have hotplugged vmware support to a running Preinstallation Environments. So how would you be able to connect over wireless from a bootcd when the system does not support it?

Explanation;

Attach a wireless usb adapter to the computer. In my case the guest vm was xpsp3. Disconnect it from the host and connect to the guest system. Create a host-only connection between the host and guest. You will now have 2 network adapters in the guest (1 usb wireless and 1 ethernet) and 1virtual network interface in the host. So on the host, all you need is 1 virtual network adapter, vmnet1 in my case. Inside the guest we must make a network bridge with the wired and wireless. Preferably connect to the access point with the usb adapter first. Important to set compatibility mode for the wired nic with "netsh bridge set adapter 2 ForceCompatibilityMode=enable" . Check the correct nic with “netsh bridge show adapter”. This is done to let the traffic be forwarded onto and over the wireless. In the host we must stop the virtual nat and dhcp services with “vnetlib – stop nat” and “vnetlib – stop dhcp”. We must also configure vmnet1 to automatically assigned IP address. When done with all configuration, issue “vnetlib – disable adapter vmnet1” and “vnetlib – enable adapter vmnet1” to have new IP and dns settings received from your access point. We can now happily surf the net over a wireless helper vm, with only one virtual network adapter on the host. So this is a bridge made the other way around.

And because of the slow speed, you better start the conversion before you go on a holiday.

Some screenshots of converter attached to different bootcds;

http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/pp106/jokke49/coldclone_bartpe_xpe.jpg

http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/pp106/jokke49/coldclone_storagecraft.jpg

http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/pp106/jokke49/coldclone_vistape_wireless.png

http://i402.photobucket.com/albums/pp106/jokke49/coldclone_windows_2008.jpg

Joakim Schicht