I Challenge Everyone...

[Tired of the Bull]

We recently purchased a few Sony Vaio laptops that use the PCGA-DSM5 docking station. The floppy and DVD drive are both located in the docking station. My goal is to create a bootable CD that allows me to use ghost to image the computers.

My problem is that every bootable CD I create works fine to boot from but the CD/DVD is never detected by any driver I can find.

Needless to say but Sony has been no help.

Please help I'm getting frustrated.

 

[zzzz]

You really want to use only Ghost? Because Acronis True Image can do the same thing in windows.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

I'd like to be able to take a crashed non-bootable system and simply re-image the HD via the bootable CD with a ghost image.

 

[zzzz]

Again try true image unless you want only ghost as the imaging program. It can do everything ghost can and then some. Free trial version in the link provided.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Diamond,

I'll give it a try but the big problem is the drivers for the CD\DVD drive in the docking station.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Diamond,

Also, this statement from the site bothers me:

<U>"Because we do not re-boot into DOS like our competitors you can be assured that we support the widest variety of modern CD, DVD, and hard disk drives for imaging and restoring. Yes, we do support that new USB 2.0 drive you just bought!"

</U>I specifically want to boot from a CD.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Diamond,

Also, this statement from the site bothers me:

"Because we do not re-boot into DOS like our competitors you can be assured that we support the widest variety of modern CD, DVD, and hard disk drives for imaging and restoring. Yes, we do support that new USB 2.0 drive you just bought!"

I specifically want to boot from a CD.

Why would this statement bother you?? it specifically says, they have the WIDEST VARIETY of modern CD, DVD and HD's for imaging. what more do you want?

 

[Budman]

Who's Diamond?

 

[zzzz]

Originally posted by: Budman
Who's Diamond?

we all are

 

[Tired of the Bull]

zzzz & Budman,

Sorry about the "Diamond" reference just did a quick glance at your name and the "zzzz" didn't register.

Platinum Gold,

The reason that the statement bothered me is because it's talking about support for the widest variety of CD drives while in windows not when attempting to boot from a CD which is my goal.

 

[corkyg]

I use DriveCopy 4 on a CDR (bootable) I made. My laptop has no floppy drive when I clone (the #2 HDD slips into the LS-120/floppy module port. So I have to boot from the DVD drive. The bootable CDR has all the CD drivers and mouse drivers, but but as soon as it boots it leaves you at the A:> prompt. Then you have to search C, D, E and whatever until you find the DVD drive. Then just execute and it does the job nicely. I think DriveImage can do the same thing (twice the cost, however) and if Norton Ghost allows a DOS bootable diskette set, then that can be converted to CDR.

I do the same thing on my desktops every week, and the latest wrinkle is Romtec's Trios II, multi-drive selector that lets you electronically select from up to 3 drives, and create Master/Slave relationships between 1 & 2, or 1 & 3 for cloning purposes.

I prefer direct cloning to ghostly drive images.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Thanks for all the replies but I think I need to be clearer on what I'm looking for.

I can image my drives fine (with both Ghost and Drive Image, both are great) and I know how to make a bootable CD to use for restoring. My problem is that the Sony Vaio only has a DVD/CDRW drive on the docking station that uses a firewire type connection that I can't find drivers for. So eventhough I can boot from the DVD/CDRW drive I can't access it for any other type of action, like running Ghost to restore. None of the drivers I've tried can find the drive.

 

[silent tone]

Let me get this straight. You can boot from the cdrw/dvd with no problems, but then when try to run the imaging application from the cd, it can't find the drive that it's currently running from.

 

[PlatinumGold]

tired

do the laptops have any other mechanism for booting??

can you boot to a floppy mb??

it would seem to me the first thing to do would be to get the thing to boot with the dvd/cdrw drivers.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

PlatinumGold,
Yes it also has a floppy in the docking station. The computer will boot from both the floppy and DVD/CDRW but none of the drivers I've found work.

istallion,
I don't think you understand how a PC based computer boots from a CD. The first step in booting from a CD is handled either by your MB BIOS or by the BIOS on a controller card (like a Promise or Highpoint controller) that follows the El Torito standard. The key being the BIOS controls the initial phase of the boot and gives enough access to the CD to allow for the loading of a Command Interpreter. Once the Command Interpreter is loaded you can then run any aplications that are in the boot image of the CD and load drivers to give full access the rest of the CD.

The last part is what is kicking my a$$. The BIOS sees the drive but none of my drivers do.

 

[Adul]

Originally posted by: Tired of the Bull
PlatinumGold,
Yes it also has a floppy in the docking station. The computer will boot from both the floppy and DVD/CDRW but none of the drivers I've found work.
istallion,
I don't think you understand how a PC based computer boots from a CD. The first step in booting from a CD is handled either by your MB BIOS or by the BIOS on a controller card (like a Promise or Highpoint controller). The key being the BIOS controls the initial phase of the boot and gives enough access to the CD to allow for the loading of a Command Interpreter. Once the Command Interpreter is loaded you can then run any aplications that are in the boot image of the CD and load drivers to give full access the rest of the CD.
The last part is what is kicking my a$$. The BIOS sees the drive but none of my drivers do.

maybe there is a linux solution for you?

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Adul,

Thanks for the reply,

I considered that. Several of my searches for drivers returned references to Linux. People trying to install Linux on this laptop were having the same problem I am. Unfortunately I'm rather Linux stupid. I was hoping someone here with more knowledge than I might point me in the right direction, DOS/Linux or whatever works.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Sounds to me like the problem is the docking station.

 

[teqwiz]

Why can't you create a bootdisk and include the dos cd drivers in with the boot disk itself? I had to do this for a Win2K machine I have. just edit the autoexec.bat.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

teqwiz,

I would love to do just that. Can you point me to some drivers that will work on this drive?