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mthrall's avatar
mthrall
Level 4
10 years ago

Issues With Symantec Recovery Disk

Hi,

 

I'm having serious problems with the symantec recovery disk.  We are using Symantec System Recovery R2 Management Solution.  PRevious to the R2 upgrade restores were tested using the downloaded recovery disk and everything worked fine now however I cant seem to get a test restore working.

 

I'm trying to a test restore on a Dell Poweredge 2850 which is running Server 2008 R2.  I've created so many recovery disks I'm going insane.  The first issue I experienced was that the 64bit recovery disk would not boot this server after testing this disk on other servers I logged a call with Symantec who got me to test the disk on a PC and it worked...

 

So I tried the 32bit disk and it boots properly andf I am able to get to the recovery utility.  So now the main issue I am experiencing is that when I try to do the restore the target drive is always coming us as Invalid.

 

At first I assumed thta this was because I had created the recovery disk on our management solution server which is a VM so the disk didnt contain the relevant drivers for the server so I went to the server and tried to edit the ISO, but because the server is running a 64 bit OS I cant edit the 32bit recovery disk ISO... I tried editing the 64bit ISO, but that still wont boot.

 

So next I installed a full version of Symantec system recovery on a Windows 8.1 PC with a different license meaning I didnt have to create the recover disk through the management solution.  Once again only the 32bit disk would boot the server and once again the target drive location comes up as invalid when I try to do the restore.

 

This time I ran the driver validation tool on the server and it came back as all drivers installed, but I still cant do a restore.  I still cant edit the iso because its a 64 bit server and 32bit ISO.  I've tried adding in the perc 4 raid driver once in the restore environment and that doesnt work.

 

So now I'm stuck, I cant work out if the problem is driver related, or because the server is built using MBR, but the restore file location is saved on a volume that is GPT.

Backing Up
Backup and Recovery
Not Applicable
Restore
System Recovery
System Recovery Disk
System Recovery Management Solution

21 Replies

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  • TRaj's avatar
    TRaj
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Mthrall, 

    A 32 bit ISO image can be used for a 32 bit server and a 64 bit can be used for 64 bit server.

    Have you tried creating a 64 bit ISO for 64 bit server ?

  • criley's avatar
    criley
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    The first issue I experienced was that the 64bit recovery disk would not boot this server after testing this disk on other servers I logged a call with Symantec who got me to test the disk on a PC and it worked...

    I would say that we need to figure out why the 64bit recovery disk is not working. You say that it would not boot, can you elaborate on this please? What exactly happened, any errors etc?

    How much memory does the server have?

  • mthrall's avatar
    mthrall
    Level 4
    10 years ago

    When attempting to boot from the 64bit ISO is starts loading the WinPE environment, so I can see the windows flag, but then after a few minutes a quick message pops up on screen that I've never been able to fully read, but the top line says something like server must restart and the server just reboots.

     

    This particular server only has 4GB of RAM, its just an old test box we use for testing things like this.

    This is not limited to this one old Dell server by the way.

     

    I also tried this on a newish HP gen 8 blade server and the 64bit ISO crashed that too, but the 32bit ISO worked and that server has Server 2012 R2 on it.

  • criley's avatar
    criley
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    What generation is the 2850 server?

    And can you please confirm the case number you had open with support?

  • mthrall's avatar
    mthrall
    Level 4
    10 years ago

    Its a gen 8 Dell server.  The case number was 08256574   I closed it when I got the server booting with the 32bit ISO.

  • criley's avatar
    criley
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    I'm checking this here so will let you know what I find...

    Are you able to contact Dell Support? If so, can you ask if the PowerEdge 2850 G8 supports booting from a 64bit version of WindowsPE 5.0 (this is the Windows 2012 R2/8.1 version of WinPE). Let me know if this is possible or not.

  • criley's avatar
    criley
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    In addition to this..... have you tried creating the x64 recovery disk on the same Windows 2008 R2 server where you are testing/attempting restore? If you can try this, please use the 'Typical' option when creating the recovery disk.

  • mthrall's avatar
    mthrall
    Level 4
    10 years ago

    I cant create the recovery disk on the server because it is managed by management solution so the option to create a recovery disk is greyed out and I have to do it on the management solution. 

     

    I could reinstall the software on the server using a standalone license so that I do get the create recovery disk option, but its not feasible to do this across our whole server estate...

  • criley's avatar
    criley
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    I could reinstall the software on the server using a standalone license so that I do get the create recovery disk option, but its not feasible to do this across our whole server estate...

    Yep, I understand that. But for the purpose of troubleshooting this particular server, can you give this a try?