Booting a Run-Time Image for Cloning

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After adding the System Cloning Tool component to and building your run-time image in Target Designer, deploy the run-time image to prepare it for cloning.

Boot the run-time image on the target device, allowing First Boot Agent (FBA) to run. After the FBA phase completes, you can update your run-time image by installing additional applications or making additional configurations.

When the run-time image is ready to be deployed, run the Fbreseal utility. This utility resets the FBA so that when a run-time image is deployed, a new machine name and security ID (SID) are generated.

To boot the run-time image and prepare it for cloning

  1. Boot the device and allow the FBA operations to complete FBA phases 0-8,500. These phases are complete when the device reboots.

  2. After the device reboots, FBA finishes running phases 8,501-11,999.

    A reboot may or may not occur, depending on the FBA operations that are specified for these phases.

  3. Depending on when the reseal phase is scheduled to occur, perform one of the following tasks:

    • If the reseal phase is scheduled for FBA phase 12,000, the run-time image is resealed immediately after FBA is finished. A message box is displayed stating "Machine Resealed! Click OK to reboot". Choose OK to restart the system.

    • If you have additional changes to make to your run-time image (installing additional applications, for example), reboot the target device and update your run-time image as required. Then run the Fbreseal.exe utility to reseal the run-time image. For more information, see Reseal Phase and FBRESEAL Commands.

      Note   The fbreseal.exe tool does not support cloning an image more than once. Once the System Cloning tool reseals a run-time image, the files fbreseal.exe is deleted from the image. This behavior is by design, and it prevents end users from accidentally launching the fbreseal.exe utility in the deployed run-time image.

      Additionally, cloning an image numerous times can lead to data loss and image corruption of user settings, IIS & database settings, domain memberships and local & group policies.

    • If you must reseal the run-time image after fbreseal has been deleted from the system, manually copy the fbreseal.exe to your run-time image.

  4. After the run-time image is resealed, see Creating a Master Run-Time Image for Cloning.

See Also

Creating a Master Run-Time Image for Cloning | Cloning Overview | Reseal Phase | How to Create a Run-Time Image for Mass Deployment

Last updated on Wednesday, October 18, 2006

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