OS in RamDisk

[Octagon]

From what I read this morning, it is harder to boot from windows 7 into a newer windows. There is extra "stuff" you need to do. If I upgrade to windows 10, it would probably work.

Randy,

I can't confirm that. My first steps booting into VHD in my way booting into RAM have been on my productive W7 PC. R2 is still on there and working. I would guess you have an UEFI Bios? That causes a lot of trouble. In this case check the latest version of BCDeasy, it says that it is able to handle UEFI Bios now. I have not tested that because I have no such issues in my systems.

The other thing is my vhd is larger than expected, if I remember correctly it's around 13 G.

That's sure not the normal R2. I have started with 13 GB VHD just to be on the save side. I can confirm that the installation works with 10GB safely, minimum without any compacting, which risks a lot of single system dependent issues, is 8GB.

Finally, instead of W10 I would strongly recommend to go with Server 2016 TP4, you will be surprised. You would need a minimum of 10GB VHD which leaves a bit less than 1 GB free. It works pretty well in RAM the same way as R2 does.

Enjoy the music ;)
Thomas

[randytsuch]

Randy,

I can't confirm that. My first steps booting into VHD in my way booting into RAM have been on my productive W7 PC. R2 is still on there and working. I would guess you have an UEFI Bios? That causes a lot of trouble. In this case check the latest version of BCDeasy, it says that it is able to handle UEFI Bios now. I have not tested that because I have no such issues in my systems.

Enjoy the music ;)
Thomas

Interesting. Well, I'll try some more tonight, and pay more attention to the error code I get when it fails.

I think I have UEFI enabled, I'll check, and try to disable.

And I'm using BCDeasy, it's what I used to try to boot from the VHD file. Just downloaded it yesterday to do this.

BTW, I this brings back memories from before, when I was trying to make a dual boot system. At some point I gave up because it was a pain, and it was easier for me to swap drives then to keep screwing with it :)

Randy

[randytsuch]

Had lots of fun with this last night ;)

I tried to boot into my VHD, and had the same problem, so I searched for a solution

Found this page
https://neosmart.net/forums/threads/win ... file.9274/

posts 8 and 9 were the most helpful.

This part of post 1 exactly describes my problem symptoms
However now I get the error 0xc0000428 'Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file.' - \Windows\system32\winload.exe. From here, I am given the option to 'investigate further' by pressing ENTER, which display the boot menu. If I proceed, it shows one option - 'Microsoft Windows'. It states down the bottom that pressing F8 will provide me with more advanced options for my selection, however it only brings me back to the winload.exe error screen.


So I tried to do what was outlined in post 9, but windows wouldn't let me change the attributes of bootmgr. I found that for some reason, windows does this sometimes. There is a way to get around it, but I gave up, and decided to try booting from my server 2012 disk.

I tried to boot into server 2012, but couldn't. I think when I was setting up to boot into a vhd file, and I had both my server 2012 and win7 os boot drives connected at the same time, easybcd did something to the 2012 disk so it wouldn't boot. Either that or windows did, maybe I confused it having two boot drives connected at the same time?

So I booted up win7, and ran easyBCD.

Go to Bootloader Setup page, and selected Change boot drive. I selected D:, which in my PC was the server 2012 os disk.

After this, I rebooted, and was able to boot server :)

So then I tried to boot my VHD, but it failed again. Did get further, at least it started now, but the spinning circle spun for a while, and I got an error message and a reboot.

After this, I booted up win7 again, and this time it did a file check before it would boot, but 5 minutes later it did boot up with no other problem.

So now I need to go look at how I made my VHD file, and figure out why it won't boot up.

Well, at least I made some progress :)

Randy

[Octagon]

Hi Randy,

I kept my fingers crossed all night, didn't worked out - sorry .... ;)

Think about starting from scratch. Far too many possibilities of crossed mistakes. Backup the whole thing, start with a new formatted disc to avoid kept information in mbr or bootmanager or.... or....

Good luck, have fun my friend
Thomas

[Octagon]

Dear All,

I work quite some time on manual optimization of MS Server 2016 TP4. In between I am happy to confirm good news about AO 2.0b10 with 2016 TP 4. There have been no issues within GUI mode on my system. Load of the system has been clearly lowered. My testing confirms that for installation on disc, vhd and booted as RAMOS into RAM. Following more details:

• clean installation of 2016 TP4 on SSD respective into new vhd of 10GB size. Proof of audio system running well within these installations:
Foobar with Sox upsampling – Acourate Asio – Acourate Convolver with online convolving/cleaner/flow – USB - Fireface UCX, priorities and affinity of all
processes set with Taggarts tool „Tasker“
• AO 2.0b10 installation works without any recognizable mistakes
• Full optimization with AO, everything switched on/off for minimized workload, only WMI switched on as needed for Acourate Convolver (and MQn by the way)

Result: no recognizable mistakes, clear reduction of processes, threads and handles

Testing Service Tool 2.0 in GUI:
• E) Shell replacement for Total Commander works fine
• F) Autologon works fine
• H) System Info works finei
• Compacting Tool works fine, resulting in a reduction of 600MB
But:
Shell afterwords again normal GUI Shell
• Reset Optimization: works fine
• Switch to Minimal Server: starts but window shuts without result (expected behaviour)
• Switch to Core: starts but window shuts without result (expected behaviour)
• Switch to GUI: start, short window with red text, no more activity follows

Test 2016 TP4 AO 2.0b10 optimized booted as OS in RAM:
• Vhd boots without any issues into RAM
• Acourate Convolver needs, in analogy to R2, new license code due to changed environment
• The differences in SQ are comparable to the one between R2 normally booted vs RAMOS

Phil and his team successfully finished the first steps to an Audiophile Optimizer for the successor of R2. Please be aware that minimal server mode can be reached at this moment in time only by direct installation of TP4 as a minimal server. But the team is working to get this integrated into AO.

My personal goal of a dedicated very, very small Nano server, successor of the R2 core mode, is far more future talk but worked on as well. We will need to wait anyway on MS's updated technical previews as well as on the final content of the final version.

It would be a bit to early from my point of view to talk about sq. As I mentioned before I recognize TP4 as a huge step MS has reached regarding audio handling. The main point you will recognize is the improvement of latency. The following examples will give you an inside that I could reach lowest latency ever in my system now:

Foobar @50ms, FF UCX @64 samples @44,1kHz 16bit
or
Foobar @50ms, JPlay @0,01ms & 700Hz, FF UCX @64 samples @44,1kHz 16bit

Enough details to keep you in the loop, don’t forget to enjoy the music ;)

Take care
Thomas

[nige2000]

TP4 seems to have much potential
i tried it as stock in comparison to win 10

a minimalist server 16 will be a good goal to aim for

[randytsuch]

I started a from scratch installation last night

Figuring out how to use the winntsetup tool to build a vhd.

I'll post updates as I progress.

Server 2016 sounds promising, but since I have a "real" license for 2012 R2, I'll try that first.

Randy

[randytsuch]

So following the German translated to English instructions, I am able to make a VHD that I can boot into, and run from :)

I also figured I must have installed more than I thought on my existing Server 2012 SDD.

A new install, with updates and nothing else installed, was just under 10G.

So, I am going to use a 12G VHD, leaving me 2G for anything I need to install, and 4G of RAM to use.

Randy

[Octagon]

A new install, with updates and nothing else installed, was just under 10G.

Hi Randy,

Great you made it! :)

I did not know that you were updating R2, I could have told you about the follow up trouble nor only about size, sorry. I do not update R2 because of that. In case needed you can download the latest ISO which includes all major updates without keeping all of the old information.

From powershell you can use "dism" with the argument "start component cleanup" to clean your updated installation.

Take care
Thomas

[randytsuch]

A new install, with updates and nothing else installed, was just under 10G.

Hi Randy,

Great you made it! :)

I did not know that you were updating R2, I could have told you about the follow up trouble nor only about size, sorry. I do not update R2 because of that. In case needed you can download the latest ISO which includes all major updates without keeping all of the old information.

From powershell you can use "dism" with the argument "start component cleanup" to clean your updated installation.

Take care
Thomas

I always update when I do a new install. I have the install disk for the licensed version, and all the ISO's I can download are the eval versions, and I'd have to convert it. I know I can convert, but running the update is easy, it's just takes a while.

Thanks for the tip on dism, I'll try that after I make a 12G VHD.