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CREATING IMAGES WITH PARAGON ADAPTIVE IMAGING TOOLS

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CONTENTS

Introduction .................................................................................................................. 3 Package contents........................................................................................................ 3 Whats needed to adapt operating system for new hardware............................... 3 How to use devscan utility .......................................................................................... 3 How to organize driver storage .................................................................................. 5 How to use hdwinstall utility ........................................................................................ 5

Copyright 1994-2009 Paragon Software Group. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION
This document will help you prepare your operating system (Windows XP/2003 Server/Vista/2008 Server/7) for backup and further restore to PCs with different hardware configurations. As you probably know, Windows family operating systems are pretty much sensible to any hardware replacement, especially when you need to replace your motherboard actually Windows will most likely fail to boot as a result of this operation. With the help of Paragon Adaptive Imaging Tools you can collect all the necessary information on the target PCs hardware, and then automatically pre-install the required drivers on the source PC to make your system bootable after restore.

PACKAGE CONTENTS
Paragon Adaptive Imaging Tools include the following components: devscan.exe a utility to collect all the necessary information on the target PCs hardware; hdwinstall.exe a utility to scan the source PC operating system, get information on the target PCs hardware, and finally install the appropriate drivers for all devices that are not currently supported by the source PC operating system; drvinst.exe a utility called from hdwinstall.exe to install drivers.

WHATS NEEDED TO ADAPT OPERATING SYSTEM FOR NEW HARDWARE

To adapt your operating system for PCs with different hardware configurations, you need to accomplish the following steps: Run devscan.exe on the target PCs to collect information on their hardware; Create driver storage on the network; Run hdwinstall.exe on the source PC to install the necessary drivers; Check log files to make sure all drivers have been installed successfully. Now your operating system is ready for backup.

HOW TO USE DEVSCAN UTILITY

devscan utility enables to derive all the necessary information on PC hardware from a Windows family operating system. In case Windows is already installed on the target PC, you can run devscan.exe from the command line. Anyway it can be started from a WinPE based bootable image. There are the following options you can use with devscan.exe: ? log:<filename> nolog Show help Set a file for logging. By default devscan.log is used. Suppress logging

Copyright 1994-2009 Paragon Software Group. All rights reserved.

4 output:<filename> layout:[e][h] Output the resulted list of devices to a specified file. By default <macaddress>.txt is used. Define an output format: e in the beginning of every string enumerator name is used h every string contains all permitted Hardware IDs for a device (without enumerator name) The default format is /layout:h Define device types for output: i devices with "installed drivers u "unknown" devices (drivers are not installed) s "secondary" and "software" devices with Hardware IDs * all devices with Hardware IDs The default format is /device:iu information on installed and unknown devices is present Select devices by enumerator only devices with specified enumerators will be included to the resulted list include:* - dont use an enumerator filter The default format: /include:acpi,pci,pciide,isapnp,hid,acpi_hal,pci_hal Exclude devices by enumerator - devices with specified enumerators will not be included to the resulted list

device:[i][u][s] device:*

include:<list of enumerator names> include:*

exclude:<list of enumerator names>

You dont need to use all available options. Moreover youre free to order them as you wish. Please note, in case of setting controversy options only the last entry will be taken into account. Every option starts with the - or / symbol. Hdwinstall utility requires a list of devices with enumerator names, so you should use the /layout:eh option. The resulted list of found devices is saved to an output file, <MAC-address>.txt by default. Output files from all target PCs should be placed to a shared folder on the network. The simplest way to collect output files from target PCs is to run devscan.exe from a shared folder with no output parameter. In this case all files will be put to the same shared folder with different names. Please note: If you have to do with a large number of the target PCs you can automate this procedure by using Paragon WinPE Customization Package. Change the share.bat script to mount a shared folder containing the devscan utility. Then create the devscan.cmd script with the following contents: Z: devscan.exe /layout:eh Finally, add a new menu item to run devscan.cmd automatically with the timeout=0. After the WinPE based bootable image is created, you can boot the target PCs from the network, making the procedure completely

Copyright 1994-2009 Paragon Software Group. All rights reserved.

5 automatic. To learn more about customizing WinPE images, please consult the manuals from Paragon WinPE Customization Package.

HOW TO ORGANIZE DRIVER STORAGE

Paragon does not distribute driver packages for PCs hardware. In most cases you can find the required drivers on CD/DVD supplied with a specific device. Please keep in mind that the hdwinstall utility doesnt work with .exe files - only .sys and .inf files are supported. To organize driver storage, please create a shared folder on the network and put there all driver packages that may be needed for the target PCs. You can put them all together or use your own subfolder structure. Please make sure that every .sys file has the only corresponding .inf file. In case several .inf files come in one package, perform the following steps: Put this driver package to a separate subfolder; Create a file inf_to_use.ar in the same subfolder; Open the created file in any text editor and type a name of the main .inf file; Save the file and close the text editor. Now the driver storage is ready to work with.

HOW TO USE HDWINSTALL UTILITY

hdwinstall utility is used to perform the following actions: Process information on the target PCs hardware; Find out whether the target PCs devices are already supported by the source PC operating system or not; Look for the appropriate drivers for devices which are not currently supported by the source PC OS; Install the found drivers on the source PC. hdwinstall.exe should be run with the following parameters: hdwinstall.exe [-s] [-o] dev_path inf_path out_file [-s] deactivates the driver signature check after restore (for Windows Vista and later versions); [-o] deactivates requests for the drivers update through Windows Update Service after restore; dev_path a path to a folder containing files with information on the target PCs hardware; inf_path a path to driver storage; out_file a path to an output file (contains a list of device IDs, which have no drivers installed).

Copyright 1994-2009 Paragon Software Group. All rights reserved.

6 drvinst.exe is called from hdwinstall.exe to install found drivers, so these utilities should be placed to the same folder.

After the utility has finished working, your source PC operating system is ready for backup and further restore on the target PCs.

Copyright 1994-2009 Paragon Software Group. All rights reserved.