Imaging a Touch Panel Computer (NI TPC-2206) Compact Flash Drive

[skol45uk]

Hi

We are using NI TPC-2206 touch-panel computers running a pre-installed build of Windows Embbeded Standard 7.

What is the best configuration of software tool and hardware to image and replicate a NI TPC-2206s' Compact Flash drive?

We have got many TPC-2206 units, but one or two have become corrupt (we did not enable EWF before we started treating them roughly with powering off).

We have tried using an application called "Active Boot Disk" to image a CF-drive and apply it back, but it fails during boot. We found an NI article about this, but it recommends using Ghost which is no longer sold.

Is there a best configuration of imaging software and CF drive which anyone has tried and used, and know works?

Thanks.

[skol45uk]

Hi

Thanks for this.

I have made an image using Ghost and successfuly cloned it to a Compact Flash drive. However, I am now having problems with EWFMGR. It keeps coming back with the response "Unable to find an Ewf volume". I have checked the new primary partition is half the size of the Compact Flash capacity available. But it still has this problem.

Any clues?

Thanks very much for your help.

[tannerite]

So after Ghosting the CF card, it now boots? If so, and you are having issues with EWFMGR, you might try running the Command Prompt as an administrator. If that doesn't work, please post screenshots of your EWFMGR messages in the Command Prompt.

It would also be helpful for you to run DISKPART in the command line and type 'list disk'. There should only be one drive 'disk 0'. Then type 'select disk 0' and then type 'list partition to show the partions you have on your CF card.

[skol45uk]

Hi

Yes, the CF drive boots fine. I made a boot image using Ghost and it went onto the other CF drive without any problems. The only thing I may not have preserved is the size of the partition. That seems to be variable from Ghost which defaults to the full capacity of the CF drive. I overrode this and set it to what I roughly calculated as half that capacity.

once the image was booted and I did some chores like emptying the recycle bin, changing the power options, etc., I opened a command window by right-clicking the cmd icon and selecting run-as-administrator. Its the only way to get ewfmgr to work. Just so you know I have been using ewfmgr this way for some time on the undamaged tpc's, without any problems.

Anyway, when I run ewfmgr it simply gives a one liner saying unable to find Ewf volume. If I do -help I see the options available to ewfmgr, so it is definitely the correct ewfmgr program that runs.

When I look at the cf disk using Control-Panel >Admin Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management, I see the primary partition and unallocated space just as I set when I applied the image. I'll send you a shot of that using diskpart as soon as I can.

Just so you are aware, I do notbhave a way of building a WES7 image from scratch. I can only use the image that comes with the TPC's themselves. Alsoi have 16GB CF drives. Th amount of used space in the primary partition is well within the partition size created via Ghost.

If you have any ideas to try when I get to making screenshots, let me know.

Thanks

[skol45uk]

As attached...

[tannerite · Accepted solution]

It looks like a quick search shows that someone else may have a similar issue and there are some things to try out on the Microsoft thread:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/fdf4bbaf-be8a-4282-b35a-e8863450589b/ewfmgr-failed-get...

[skol45uk]

Spot on! Thanks very much for your help.

It came down to C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\ and sysprep'ing the source image before cloning. The other comments in the article also helped me fix the source drive itself!

Great article. Thanks for finding it for me.

[tannerite]

That is great! I am glad you got it working.