Category Archives: Hardware

Posts concerning specific hardware issues, products, and tech stuff of a physical nature.

I needed to convert a physical Windows XP Professional machine running ZENworks into a VMware virtual machine, but only after removing the unique identifiers like the Windows’ SID and ZENworks’ GUID, so that I could later make multiple copies of the VM without them all writing to the same ZENworks object. After weighing my options, I decided that it wouldn’t be practical to hot clone the physical machine. The best method would be to unregister the ZENworks object, uninstall the Adaptive Agent, pull it off the network, reinstall the Adaptive Agent, and then sysprep -reseal -shutdown the machine. This would leave me with a hard drive with a XP installation ready to generate new IDs the next time it was powered on. But as you well know, the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone app can only perform P2V hot cloning. Cold cloning requires the VMware Cold Clone Boot ISO, which is only available to VMware Converter Enterprise license-holders.

After some Googling around, I came across this thing called MOA, Multi-Operating system Administration. Basically, it creates a LiveCD that runs the free VMware Converter on top of a Windows Server 2003 kernel. It’s very, very nice and developed by an obvious super-genius. Just how cool is it? How about the ability to boot a physical box and start the originally installed system as a virtual machine?

Here are the steps I took to build my free cold clone boot CD.

Creating the cold clone boot CD

This builds a LiveCD using Windows Server 2003 that can then run VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 3.0.3 (previously known as VMware Converter Starter Edition) in order to cold clone a hard drive.

Caveats

The version of Windows running in the LiveCD should be the same as, or later than, the version of the Windows machine you want to convert to a VM.

VMware recommends, when cold cloning using their boot CD, that the source physical machine have 364MB of memory, with a minimum of 264MB. MOA recommends, for the Bandit version ISO, that the physical machine have at least 512MB and preferably 1GB or more.

Required files

Download moa241-setup.exe (2.7MB) from
http://sanbarrow.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1544
You will need to sign up at the forums to gain access to the download.

Download X13-05665.img (596MB) (Windows Server 2003) from
http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/5/C/E5C2CA69-28C9-492A-8F57-BDA0010616E5/X13-05665.img

Download VMware-converter-3.0.3-89816.exe (30.1MB) from
http://download3.vmware.com/software/converter/VMware-converter-3.0.3-89816.exe

Put all three files in the same folder (with no spaces in the folder name) on a NTFS-formatted disk. MOA will refer to this as the ‘building directory’.

Assemble the ISO

Run moa241-setup.exe.
In the application menu, click moa -> create MOA core.

If you have put the X13-05665.img file into the root of the building directory, MOA will extract the files automatically. If the X13-05665.img file is in a different location or if you are using a different OS to build the LiveCD, MOA setup asks for the location of your Windows-sources. This must be a 32-bit OS, like XP or Server 2003. If you have the files on a CD or mounted using Daemon-tools, just select the drive letter; if you have them extracted somewhere on your hard disk, point to the directory one level higher than the I386 directory.

The MOA setup app asks a few questions about the environment you want to build. Answer these very quickly, as they appear to have a default answer which will be selected automatically after a very short timeout (maybe like 10 seconds).

The MOA setup runs a nifty little DOS app that downloads another 20.34MB of core files. It will ask if you want to download drivers, which is another 17MB download. After another few questions, it runs PE Builder v3.1.10a.

The MOA setup then asks if you want to install VMware Converter 3.0.3 (the default is no, so quickly click yes). After which, it asks you if you want the converter to autostart (default is no, which is fine).

A standard image ISO is created automatically. You can also create a Bandit image ISO, which seems to be what most people use. In my case, the standard image is 374,622KB, while the Bandit image is 296,810KB. The Bandit version should also be faster than the standard version.

The ISO files are saved to iso-out. Burn to CD or DVD using whatever method you prefer.

Booting from the LiveCD

When booting from the Bandit image, you will get the following message, “can’t find vmware – starting plan B”, which makes it seem like something is wrong.

An Open File dialogue box then opens in the ramdisk vm folder and displays “can’t find vmware files in default location – please select a different path”. It’s looking for a Workstation or VMware Player installation here, not the Converter. Just click Cancel.

Another Open File dialogue box will open, stating “still can’t find VMware – you may want to mount a wim”. Click Cancel again.

After a few more seconds, MOA will be finished booting up and the GUI will minimize. Click the taskbar button to open it back up, then right-click the button with the image of the desktop PC with the VMware logo on the screen and select “start converter” from the menu. A Browse for Folder dialogue box will open. Browse to X:/moahome/vm/converter/ and click OK. VMware Converter will launch.

If things are not going as expected, the developer has made a video tutorial showing a boot into MOA followed by a cold cloning operation, located at http://sanbarrow.com/moa23/coldclone-howto/coldclone-howto.html

I saved my new virtual machine to a second physical disk, then put that drive into another machine with VMware Server 1.0.9 already installed and copied over the three vm files.

I started VMware Server and clicked Open Existing Virtual Machine, but when I tried to add the new vm to the inventory, VMware Server Console popped up an error: Unable to add virtual machine “D:Virtual Machinescoldclonetestcoldclonetest.vmx” to the inventory. Configuration file was created by a VMware product with more features than this version.

Some quick Googling led to the fix:

Open the virtual machine’s two ~1 KB configuration files in a text editor.

In the *.vmx file, change

virtualHW.version = "6"
to
virtualHW.version = "4"

In the *.vmdk file, change

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "6"
to
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"

After I made those changes, the virtual machine powered on and booted into XP, running all the expected install scripts and generating unique Windows and ZENworks identifiers. I’ve also successfully cold cloned a Windows 2000 machine using the same boot CD.

MOA on a bootable USB drive

If you would prefer to use a bootable USB drive instead of a LiveCD, here are some tips for getting MOA onto a USB drive: http://sanbarrow.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1250

I was trying to set up a friend’s Xbox 360 on my home network that uses a D-Link DI-624 router (Rev. C) with version 2.76 firmware and a brand new Motorola Netopia 2210-02 ADSL modem, but I wasn’t able to connect to Xbox Live.

My Xbox, which had been connected for months with an Open NAT while using a old Siemens Speedstream 4100 modem, never had any problems connecting.

I double checked all the connections, powercycled the Xbox, then ran the network tests from the System blade. It would pass all of the tests up until the Xbox Live test, at which point it would fail spectacularly and restart the tests – but this time displaying a “Disconnected” message at the Network Adapter test.

I bypassed the router and plugged the Xbox straight into the DSL modem and was able to connect, but with a Strict NAT. (I should have realized the significance of this right away, but I didn’t.)

So I reconnected the router and kept experimenting. After a while, I noticed that my computers connected to the router also lost their connections when I tried to sign in to Xbox Live.

As it turns out, the suspicious-looking disconnection message was accurate – something the Xbox was doing was causing the router to reboot.

I Googled around and found a few good posts about this problem.

First, I disabled UPnP on the D-Link router thanks to the advice in this Ars Technica forum post. Then I configured it to assign the Xbox a static IP address and then put that IP address in the DMZ. Now the Xbox was able to connect to Xbox Live, but the NAT status was Strict.

I wasn’t going to settle for that, though. I wanted to get an Open NAT.

So I took it out of the DMZ and port forwarded UDP 88 and both UDP & TCP 3074 ports to the static IP address, but the NAT status was still Strict.

Giving the Xbox a static IP address and forwarding the ports had fixed similar connection issues and permitted an Open NAT for almost everyone else, why wasn’t it working for this setup?

More Googling finally turned up the explanation. The Motorola Netopia 2210 contains a NAT router, so no matter what I did with the D-Link’s settings, I was going to keep getting the Strict NAT from the modem as long as it was handling the PPPoE. (This is what I should have realized earlier, when I was connecting the Xbox directly to the modem.)

The Motorola/Netopia 2210 is also a router with full DHCP functions and may not function correctly when connected directly to another router. Not changing the modem to Bridged Ethernet may result in double NAT’ing, increased latency, possible IP conflicts, or possibly a network that doesn’t work at all.
– http://www.dslreports.com/faq/15855

The solution was to configure the modem to use “Bridged Ethernet” mode and set up PPPoE on the router.

As long as you’re setting up PPPoE on the router, you may want to select “Keep Alive” or “Always On”, if those options are available, or set the Maximum Idle Time to “0”. You should also confirm that the MTU value is “1492” and that value is used on all the devices on the network.

Also note that the Motorola Netopia 2210 has an “Internet” light that lights up green whenever there is an active PPPoE session initiated by it. The light will stay off when the PPPoE session is initiated by a router or other device.

A few days ago, I decided to replace my motherboard’s dirty, noisy, five-year old Socket 478 cpu fan with a brand new and significantly larger Ultra fan and heat sink. As I opened the case, it crossed my mind to just unscrew the old fan and screw in the new fan. I suppose some part of me anticipated major headaches ahead, but I didn’t listen to that part. Instead, I listened to the part of me that said, “The right way is to use the new, larger and therefore better heat sink.”

I lifted the levers of the heat sink brackets, breaking the first one and in the process charging past another clear warning sign. After carefully easing the brackets off the mount with a flat-head screwdriver, I gently pulled on the heat sink, rocking it slightly but not twisting it. With a quiet sound similar to velcro being pulled apart, the heat sink was free and I was looking into the empty socket on the motherboard—the cpu was stuck to the heat sink.

With only minimal exertion, I had managed to pull out the cpu along with the heat sink; the two still very firmly attached to one another with some sort of adhesive that Gateway used instead of grease. Figuring wrongly that because it came out so easily, it should go back in without much trouble, I lined up the pins and tried to press the chip back into the socket. The still-attached heat sink, of course, preventing me from lifting the socket’s locking bar. Luckily, I quickly realized that this plan held the very real potential for disaster, and that if the chip wasn’t already broken, bent pins would certainly ruin any chance of salvaging it. So, I backed off and consulted Google, where I found some excellent advice.

Placing the chip/heat sink combo on the table with the pins up, I wet a partially denuded Q-Tip with Goo Gone and worked it along the seam, being careful to avoid getting any Goo Gone on the PCB or in the gap between the PCB and the chip’s metal cap. Then I paced around anxiously for ten minutes and applied a few more drops. The instructions suggested placing a credit card against the seam of the chip and the heat sink and tapping the card with a hammer, so I tried that, but was afraid that a tap powerful enough to free the cpu might also break it. So I instead placed the point of a pocket knife in the seam, angled toward the heat sink, and gave that a few timid taps. And lo, the chip dropped right off. With more Goo Gone and some cotton balls, I removed the remaining adhesive from the chip, wiped it down with rubbing alcohol for good measure, greased it and replaced it in the socket.

Then I tried to set the new Ultra heat sink into place, but it was ever so slightly too wide for the mount. This put me over the edge. After about 2 hours of panic and visions of coughing up for a new motherboard and chip, I was stuck using the old heat sink. So I cleaned it off, screwed the new fan into it, and clipped it into place. I hit the power button, and amazingly, it POSTed and booted normally, after a warning that Windows wasn’t shut down properly.

Strike another one for doing a project the easy way instead of the right way.

I’m getting a periodic blue screen of death (BSOD) with my D-Link AirPlus DWL-G520 wireless network PCI card. The BSOD occurs intermittently, but will always occur immediately after I click on a link in a web page.

More precisely, I’m using a D-Link AirPlus Xtreme G 108Mbps PCI Adapter DWL-G520 Wireless PCI Adapter(rev.B) card with WPA-PSK network authentication and TKIP data encryption. I haven’t gone to the trouble of opening the case to find the exact hardware specs, because I have a lot of crap piled on top of it. The driver (according to the D-Link web site) is version 3.18, released on 5/9/2005. According to Windows Device Manager, it’s driver version 4.0.0.1414, released on 3/22/2005. Thanks for the added confusion, guys.

This card then connects to a D-Link DI-624 Wireless Router with hardware version C3 and firmware version 2.70. I realize that there is a newer firmware version out there, version 2.75, but I’m not sure it’s Xbox compatible, so I’m holding off on updating.

The error itself is a STOP: 0x000000D1 DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL which occurs in the file A3AB.SYS.

I’ve looked into this problem, and while there are a few bulletin board topics mentioning the A3AB.SYS BSOD, they generally tend to suggest using Atheros drivers instead of the D-Link-recommended drivers. The deal is that Atheros developed the chipset, AR5002G, for the DWL-G520, and also writes its own drivers for the chipset which are more recent than the drivers supplied by D-Link. At least one poster recommended the Ekahau Wireless Utility and Driver. After ruling out some other possible causes, I’ll probably try these alternate drivers.

My theory is that the error is due to the WPA-PSK / TKIP encryption, which I turned on shortly before getting the BSOD for the first time. Unfortunately, to test the theory that the error is related to the WPA-PSK / TKIP encryption, I would have to fiddle with my network security for a few days, something I’m unwilling to do.

It has been suggested that the error is caused by the network card overheating due to its proximity to the video card, and while excess heat may be the cause of someone’s problems, my system functioned perfectly fine for months with the cards in their current slots. It’s still a good idea to try to keep your other PCI cards as far away as possible from the video card, because that thing will generate some heat.

Furthermore, some people report that when they search their system for A3AB.SYS, they get multiple files, but with different sizes and time stamps. There is also the implication that A3AB.SYS should exist only in the D-Link drivers folder created when the driver is installed, and not in C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32DRIVERS. Whether this is actually problematic is something I’d have to look into.

Another possibility raised on the boards is that the BSOD is caused by the router’s Super G Mode, specifically, by the Super G with Dynamic Turbo option. Of the possible fixes, this is the easiest to test, so it’s going to be the first one I try. I’ve changed the mode to Super G without Turbo on the router.

To sum up, the D-Link AirPlus DWL-G520 wireless network PCI card seems to be a bona fide piece of crap some of the time.

Update: August 28, 2006

Well, after a few weeks of using the router with the turbo mode disabled, there have been no BSODs. Who’da thunk it? If you’re having similar problems with your router, I would recommend that you change the mode from Super G with Dynamic Turbo to Super G without Turbo. To do this, log into the router’s admin panel, and from the Home tab, click on the Wireless button. Change the value in the Super G Mode : drop down menu to “Super G without Turbo”.