Agilent 54831D modernising

[ARF]

Your SSD is OK enough for this application.

I checked the link, there are two files.

[bostonman]

Odd, I didn't see both before, but I saw them now. I'm downloading them as I type.

Unfortunately I'm uncertain if I'll get to this before the weekend, however, I will keep you posted.

Thanks again.

[bostonman]

1. Burn a CD with Paragon Hard Disk Manager 12.

Think I know the answer to this, but this is to be done by a program that will make the CD bootable, correct?

What is the purpose of the Paragon Hard Disk manager? I assume things will become clearer once I start the process, but wanted to get some clarification ahead of time. As stated before, I'm use to sticking a CD in and letting it install, so to me, this XP should be similar, however, after looking at the ZIP contents, it doesn't appear to be your typical standalone installation CD.

[bostonman]

I'm having issues with Paragon.

I've tried different programs. One alerts me that it doesn't have any boot information, others don't allow DVD ROM access for some reason; just thumb drive (which doesn't work in the scope because it doesn't have USB support on startup - or believe this is the issue).

What is needed to get Paragon onto a CD?

[coromonadalix]

I think there is a few things you dont understand

If you need to clone a drive, it must not be used / booted,  you remove the drive and use another computer to do the job

WHY  if it's the case, an booted os, will protect some of it's drivers / files from being accessed externally by other softwares


And  you have some  called WINPE bootables cd-rom with tons of apps  to help,  WINPE is a minimalist windows bootable version ....

EX: https://www.geckoandfly.com/32030/bootable-windows-pe-recovery-repair/

[ARF]

If you are using Win10, then just right-click - burn the ISO image or any program for burning СD.
After that you can boot from this CD your scope. By default in BIOS the first boot device is CD-ROM, if it is not, then change it.

[bostonman]

If you need to clone a drive, it must not be used / booted,  you remove the drive and use another computer to do the job

If you read through the thread, you'll see I'm trying to install a whole new OS from scratch.

If you are using Win10, then just right-click - burn the ISO image or any program for burning СD.
After that you can boot from this CD your scope. By default in BIOS the first boot device is CD-ROM, if it is not, then change it.

From my understanding, I need the Paragon ISO to be burnt onto a CD in a way that gets extracted as a bootable CD. I think the method you mention would burn it as a ISO file.

In any case, I'm using Win7 and can't get Paragon onto a CD. Rufus, WinISO, etc... aren't working. They are only seeing thumbdrives in some cases, one program states the ISO doesn't contain boot information, etc...

[ARF]

There should be no problem burning the ISO image to the CD. Any recording program should do this correctly.

In any case, I won't be able to test it until next week. I almost completely disassembled my oscilloscope and ordered new electrolytic capacitors, which will be after the 20th.

[bostonman]

Maybe I'm wrong, but if I just burn it as a file, it will burn it to the CD as a file without any bootable information.

I guess my question is: what is the purpose of using Paragon? I'm a bit confused over the connection between the XP stuff you provided and Paragon. I'm guessing it's a bootable CD but also provides tools to install the XP CD, but can this be done with another piece of software?

Anyway, as you stated, you can't do much at the moment. I'll either keep trying or wait for further direction once you get the scope together.

[ARF]

My poor knowledge of English does not allow me to somehow joke ...

This CD image from the link is a special boot disk from Paragon. Nothing needs to be added from the outside, everything is already inside, it is not designed for Windows, it is only needed to boot from it.

Paragon - is needed in order to write the oscilloscope HDD image to a physical HDD inside the scope.

If the oscilloscope could boot from a flash drive, then I would give you one image for the flash drive, which would include a program for writing to HDD and an image for recording.

However, the oscilloscope cannot boot from a USB flash drive, so you need an CD disk to boot, and the recording image itself will be on a USB flash drive separately. Is it clear?

[bostonman]

I managed to get Paragon on an IDE drive. The problem I was having: my work laptop (my main computer) that has Win10 prevents me from installing any software (because it's a work laptop), but it doesn't have a DVD ROM regardless.

My Win7 laptop wouldn't burn Paragon to a CD for some reason. This left me with little to no options.

Anyway, I used an IDE to USB to connect an IDE drive to the laptop. Once I got that connected, I burned Paragon onto the IDE drive.

After I connected the IDE drive with Paragon on one IDE connector in the scope and a blank 32GB SSD on another connector (same IDE cable). The Paragon drive booted as a master with the blank as a slave.

The scope booted Paragon and I did a restore (by having Agilent_5483x_HDD_WINXP on the thumbdrive, however, once I booted the scope after the restore, I got a Smart Boot Manager 3.7.1.1 screen. It wouldn't allow me to do anything because it kept asking for a password.

I have no clue what this Smart Boot Manager is and why the scope didn't boot XP.

Do you know any reason for this?

[ARF]

This is weird. This is usually due to the psychical sector size and the fact that the recovery program is trying to align the partition with respect to the physical sector of the disk. I tested it on SSD and HDD - it worked for me, but you have a different SSD.

This bootloader you see has to choose between the boot partition and the recovery partition and it didn't find the partitions due to their new offset.

Password - "agilent"

Try to autosearch partitions "ctrl+h" and boot partition 1 if it is found.

You can work with the standard Windows XP bootloader, only in this case the recovery section will not be available. This will be discussed later.

[bostonman]

This is weird. This is usually due to the psychical sector size and the fact that the recovery program is trying to align the partition with respect to the physical sector of the disk. I tested it on SSD and HDD - it worked for me, but you have a different SSD.

This may be due to the day before I had to abort the installation, so maybe it created a second partition. Anyway, thanks for the password (I should have considered 'agilent in the first place). Once I entered the password, I deleted that boot mean and XP loaded.

Unfortunately I continue having issues. Once XP booted, I heard a single relay click, and then I got errors (see attached). I tried a reboot and holding CTRL in hopes of doing a fresh install (per your previous statement), but that only brought me back to XP desktop without loading the scope program.

I clicked on the scope program icon and got the same error.

I thought maybe it had something to do with the bootloader menu, I decided to start fresh. I removed the SSD, deleted the partitions, formatted the drive with a full single partition, and reinstalled XP.

One of the attached pictures is named 'Confusing Menu', I don't understand the purpose of this step. The first step I need to select the ISO (which is on the thumb drive), the second menu is the "Confusing Menu", and the third asks for which drive to install the ISO. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong on the "Confusing Menu".

In any case, the scope program didn't load, so I'm uncertain what else could be wrong. I'll try another install of the ISO, but not sure if this will solve the problem.

[ARF]

You did everything right, you need to restore the HDD, not partitions, so your choice is the first line - "recover HDD"

After you have done auto search for partitions in the bootloader, you should get 2 partitions in the list. Try to boot from the second partition - this is the factory system recovery partition and restore a "clean system" from it.

I do not like that in your case the partitions have shifted, but since you have disassembled the oscilloscope and know how to connect a second HDD, then we can try other more reliable cloning options. For now, try what I suggested above.

[Jwalling]

If you can email me a USPS medium flat rate box label, I'll send you a pre-imaged XP disk drive with everything to get you up and running. Just drop it in and go. Send me a PM if you're interested.

If you want me to put it on your SSD, I can do that as well.
Jay

[bostonman]

so your choice is the first line - "recover HDD"

Where do you see recover HDD in my screen shot? Or are you talking a different menu?

If you can email me a USPS medium flat rate box label, I'll send you a pre-imaged XP disk drive with everything to get you up and running. Just drop it in and go. Send me a PM if you're interested.

If you want me to put it on your SSD, I can do that as well.

Thanks, let me keep this as an option for now as I'd like to figure this out on my own.

[ARF]

"Basic MBR Hard disk"

[bostonman]

So I don't check anything on this screen?

What is the purpose of this step? The on screen directions don't explain what they are asking for.

[ARF]

Purpose - you can restore the entire HDD or a separate selected partition.

Have you already tried booting from the recovery partition?

[bostonman]

Steps tried so far:

Burned the ISO onto the SSD and got the Smart Boot Manager
Removed the Smart Boot Manager
XP Loaded but got the error screen when it tried booting the scope program (screen shot posted in a previous message)
Removed SSD, deleted all partitions, created a single partition the size of the hard drive, and formatted it using default sector size
Reinstalled the ISO
System didn't boot - just showed a flashing cursor
Removed the SSD, deleted all partitions, created a single partion the size of the hard drive, and formatted it using default sector size
Posted the message to the thread to figure out which steps to take next time
Will try your suggestions hopefully tonight or sometime this week

[ARF]

Huh.. man.. we are spammers!

Send in my PM your phone or something WhatsApp/Telegram so.. we can speak in real time.

[bostonman]

Where are you located?

I don't have WhatsApp or whatever, so we'll see, but I plan to tinker more this weekend.

[ARF]

Georgia, UTC+4

[bostonman]

Yesterday I tried this again and unfortunately I got the same application error as I did the first time.

Attached is a PDF of all the screen captures as I went through the process.

The setup: an IDE 5.25" drive is connected to one IDE connector, and this has Paragon on it which the scope boots from. The freshly formatted SSD 32GB (which reads somewhere around 29.8GB) is on the other IDE connector; both on the same IDE cable (one primary, one secondary). The USB (labled: 4GB_Drive) has the Agilent scope software on it.

The screen shots show which options are selected just as I'm about to select 'next'. The SSD was formatted with a label of 'Agilent' and shows as Agilent (C:) Basic MBR Hard Disk 0 (TS32GSSD270S).

It took approximately 60min to complete the restore. Once finished, I turned off the scope, disconnected the USB and 5.25" leaving just the SSD (which now has the XP image) and booted the scope.

The scope booted showing the XP splash screen, eventually the desktop, began installing drivers as it found hardware, went to boot the scope software, I heard a single relay click, and it gave an error. Once I clicked 'close', the scope froze.

I tried rebooting by turning off the scope. The same thing series of events happened (except it no longer needed to install anymore drivers), the scope software went to load, I heard a relay click, got an error, I clicked 'close', and it was frozen.

Thinking maybe it just needed time, I let it sit for several minutes, however, it remained frozen.

I couldn't figure out how to boot the factory image. Previously you mentioned holding down the CTRL key, but that didn't work. As you mentioned, we can chat, however, the steps to do this is quite time consuming, so I don't think we'd accomplish much. The screen captures are a good visual of what I did, also, this is exactly what has happened two or three previous times I installed the XP image.

[ARF]

Hold "CTRL", turn on the scope and wait..
You should enter in Smart Boot Manager.
Make screenshot for me.