A+ OS exam Help Needed

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Here is a question I could not find an answer to and I dont think was covered in the Mike Meyers book. Is installing from a disk image covered in the Mike Meyers book. If not does anyone know where I can read about it?

An A+ Professional is installing Windows XP Professional on a computer using a disk image from another Windows XP Professional computer. After installing the disk image, which maintenance activity must be performed the computer can sucessfully boot?

Repair the the Windows XP installation
Reinstall the Windows XP installation
Boot up in Safe Mode, and run the sys c: command.
Boot up to the command prompt, and run the winnt32.exe
command.

Answer:
Repair the Windows XP installation

Explanation:

Repairing the Windows XP installation is the maintenance activity that must be carried out before the computer can successfully boot. The repair step will redetect the hardware and tune the installation to match the specific hardware in the computer. When installing using a disk image, you may recieve an NTLDR is missing error message if you have not repaired the installation. This is because the original NTLDR file may point to an invalid boot device.

 

I agree with Sparky on that one!

It has to be Repair the the Windows XP installation. I have just looked through all the mike meyers books and I can't find a question like the one stated above but there is a section on Image Installation- regarding Nortons Ghost p219

operating systems by mike meyers isbn0072231246

 

The explanation is correct and applying Sparky's logic you would be fine. However I think you would need to understand how NTLDR is used in the start-up sequence of XP to realise why the answer is correct.

NTLDR, along with other boot files, collects information about the hardware configuration on a computer during the boot sequence. This info is stored in the registry and is used during the next start up sequence. It is also used to for the Last Known Good Configuration option to revert back to the previous hardware configuration before changes were stored in the registry (after log on).

Now, if you take a disc image of XP running on an AMD motherboard and CPU and put it on a system using Intel motherboard and CPU, the OS is going to have the registry configured for AMD. This will include which drivers to use, which partition to boot from etc, etc.

By simply running the disc image you will cause conflict between the stored hardware configuration and what is physically there in the pc. By repairing the installation, XP gathers all the hardware configuaration from scratch and configures the boot files to match the new hardware as well (Boot.ini is a good example as it stores info about hard discs, their partitions and installed operating systems).

There is obviously a lot more to say about this but I don't think you need to be bogged down with the details of the XP startup sequence just now.

Hope this helps

Paul

 

Just to add a bit..

If the disk image which will contain configuration entries in the registry and drivers for the original hardware is installed on a PC with the same hardware then there would be no need for doing a repair install.

But, if the hardware is *different* then you need to get XP to recognise and configure the new hardware. By doing a *repair* you are forcing XP to detect and configure all the new hardware (plug and play devices).

 

In addition, if the hardware is sufficiently different then the image may not boot at all.

Harry.

 

Yes I think that the HAL has to be the same.