Windows 2000 Hardware
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I am looking into the possibilities of creating an IN-HOUSE solution for restoring an image of 2000 O/S to any server regardless of hardware. The only way I know this will work is if I can somehow detect the current hardware and enter those settings in the registry. Does anyone know of a way (or is there an existing command line util) that will run the hardware detect? I would like to restore a Win2K image and then run hardware detect (similar to what Windows does during setup). Any thoughts?
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I am looking into the possibilities of creating an IN-HOUSE solution for restoring an image of 2000 O/S to any server regardless of hardware. The only way I know this will work is if I can somehow detect the current hardware and enter those settings in the registry. Does anyone know of a way (or is there an existing command line util) that will run the hardware detect? I would like to restore a Win2K image and then run hardware detect (similar to what Windows does during setup). Any thoughts?
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I am looking into the possibilities of creating an IN-HOUSE solution for restoring an image of 2000 O/S to any server regardless of hardware. The only way I know this will work is if I can somehow detect the current hardware and enter those settings in the registry. Does anyone know of a way (or is there an existing command line util) that will run the hardware detect? I would like to restore a Win2K image and then run hardware detect (similar to what Windows does during setup). Any thoughts?
A Windows 2000 image will only work correctly if the right kernel, HAL and boot drivers are in the image. There are two main versions of kernel, uniprocessor (NTOSKRNL.EXE on the install disk) and multiprocessor (NTKRNLMP.EXE). There are also physical address extension versions (NTKRNLPA.EXE and NTKRPAMP.EXE) for systems with >4Gb of memory. A 'normal' and a PA image are both installed on any given system; once installed they're simply named NTOSKRNL.EXE and NTKRNLPA.EXE - the multiproc versions are renamed. There are a multitude of HALs supplied with the OS, including 'basic', 'multiprocessor', 'ACPI', 'single-processor APIC', 'ACPI with APIC'. Again, get the right one, or your system likely won't boot. Finally, your system loads a number of drivers at boot time, which are needed to be able to load the rest of the system. These are the drivers which are listed before the switch to graphics mode when you select a Safe Mode boot. Typically this includes system bus drivers and disk drivers. If one system's Athlon-based and another Intel-based, you may have problems if you're not using Microsoft's generic drivers.