The Lounge - CodeProject

Re: One commit ago, Dart code worked just fine

Eddy Vluggen31-Jan-20 11:42

31-Jan-20 11:42

No, no, that won't do.

The usual complaint in the forum is that it worked yesterday, and nothing changed and it just stopped working.

You can't just admit you broke it like that.

Bastard Programmer from Hell Suspicious | :suss:

If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.

Re: One commit ago, Dart code worked just fine

Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan31-Jan-20 12:30

Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan

31-Jan-20 12:30

Quote:
is that it worked yesterday, and nothing changed and it just stopped working.

Not yesterday, just one commit ago.

Nothing changed, restarted the emulators to try everything with fresh app installation and it stopped working. I did a hard reset on my Git, but still the same. Sigh | :sigh:

The take away is, always test the code from the beginning and then commit. Sadly, I did not have the tests written to verify these services (contacts storage and database) so this is what I need to work on.

The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~

Re: One commit ago, Dart code worked just fine

Eddy Vluggen31-Jan-20 12:55

Eddy Vluggen

31-Jan-20 12:55

Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan wrote:
Nothing changed

Exactly what I wanted to hear Big Grin | :-D

Yes, cherry picking, and not meant to be taken too seriously.

Bastard Programmer from Hell Suspicious | :suss:

If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.

Cloning disks - UEFI hell

charlieg31-Jan-20 8:26

charlieg

31-Jan-20 8:26

Any UEFI, TPM, Windows 10 wizards around? Maybe a link to a suggested Microsoft discussion forum...

All I'm trying to do is clone old disk drive to new SSD. I've done it in a disk duplicator, I've used multiple target SSDs, and tried multiple s/w packages - Macrium Reflect, AEOMI (or whatever), Acronis 2020. Nothing yields a bootable UEFI disk.

My working theory is that when you install Windows 10, something is registered in the TPM module on the motherboard. Read about TPM. *try* and find info on how Windows 10 uses it. Anyway, I think the keys mismatch, and Windows 10 refuses to run. Updating some past posts on other sites, I came across this post:

Quote:
It is recommended to put the new drive in the laptop first, and connect the old drive via USB. Otherwise you will may not be able to boot from the new cloned drive, as Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB. If the new disk is inside the laptop, the boot settings will be automatically adjusted to boot from internal disk. As such, hard disk bays cannot be used for target disks. For example, if you have a target hard disk (i.e. the new disk to which you clone, and from which you intend to boot the machine) in a bay, and not physically inside the laptop, the target hard disk will be unbootable after the cloning.

What irritates the heck out of me is that there is no "why" explanation. Why do I have to do it this way?
Mad | :mad:

Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Cp-Coder31-Jan-20 8:53

Cp-Coder

31-Jan-20 8:53

Given the amount of time you spent, wouldn't it be better to just repartition the new drive for UEFI and do a clean Windows install?

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

charlieg31-Jan-20 9:16

charlieg

31-Jan-20 9:16

Sacrilege!

Actually my laptop is fine, thank goodness. But, think about what you are saying, and comments like yours piss me off. Please don't take that the wrong way, I mean it with no malice. This is what Microsoft, Dell, etc say all the time. wtf should I have to re-install an OS to upgrade a disk? Something is seriously off the rails.

For the record, this is a family IT support issue. In my research, it's a common plague, and now I want to know what the elephant is going on. It's the engineer in me.
Rose | [Rose]

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Cp-Coder31-Jan-20 9:25

Cp-Coder

31-Jan-20 9:25

Quote:
wtf should I have to re-install an OS to upgrade a disk

Good luck with your approach! I have all the software tools to prep a new drive and once the drive is installed, it takes me less than 20 minutes to get Windows 10 activated, up and running. (That is before the updates start.) Smile | :)

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

charlieg31-Jan-20 10:16

charlieg

31-Jan-20 10:16

I appreciate what you are saying. And I could go your route. But I'm trying to understand why it won't boot. It's amazing how little information is out there. Just lots of herky jerky do this and do that.

I'll be sure to follow this thread up.

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Cp-Coder31-Jan-20 11:13

Cp-Coder

31-Jan-20 11:13

Quote:
I'll be sure to follow this thread up.

I look forward to it!

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Randor 31-Jan-20 9:20

Randor

31-Jan-20 9:20

Hi,

Put your original hard drive back in and boot into Windows. Then open Windows Defender and navigate to the 'Device Security' tab and disable Secure Boot. You should also probably disable 'Fast Boot'. Go into the UEFI BIOS and disable 'Secure Boot' there too. Now clone the drive.

Then put the cloned drive into your workstation and it should boot. Go back and re-enable Secure Boot.

UEFI Spec is here[^].

Good luck,
-David Delaune

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Mark_Wallace31-Jan-20 10:16

Mark_Wallace

31-Jan-20 10:16

Well, damn!

I should have figured that out for myself.

Nice one.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Rick York31-Jan-20 10:28

Rick York

31-Jan-20 10:28

Secure boot has caused me a lot of grief with windows updates.

"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

charlieg31-Jan-20 10:57

charlieg

31-Jan-20 10:57

I understand the reason for UEFI and SecureBoot. But I believe there is deeper MS bs going on...
I base this on the total fluff I read on MS forums.

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Rick York31-Jan-20 12:16

Rick York

31-Jan-20 12:16

I have little doubt of that.

"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Jörgen Andersson31-Jan-20 21:29

Jörgen Andersson

31-Jan-20 21:29

Two birds one stone etc.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Southmountain31-Jan-20 18:15

Southmountain

31-Jan-20 18:15

your info is great and helps me...

diligent hands rule....

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

charlieg1-Feb-20 4:03

charlieg

1-Feb-20 4:03

Well that's some heavy reading, thanks for the link.

Now, it sounds like you have done this before, so I'll ask you. I have read numerous articles from various windows 10 support sites as well as Microsoft suggesting that disabling SecureBoot may result in a complete OS re-install. Any thoughts on this?

I don't have a booting replacement disk as a backup yet, so I'm not at liberty to play.

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

Randor 1-Feb-20 6:31

Randor

1-Feb-20 6:31

charlieg wrote:
disabling SecureBoot may result in a complete OS re-install. Any thoughts on this?

Well, I can't think of any scenario that cannot be fixed. Although there are some UEFI BIOS that don't even have an option for disabling Secure Boot. Maybe that's what you are referring to. But even that shound be fixable from a WinPE boot source.

If your goal is to have a secure operating system then you'll want to keep Secure Boot enabled. If your goal is a honeypot then leave it disabled.

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

dandy7231-Jan-20 9:23

dandy72

31-Jan-20 9:23

This will probably show my lack of experience with UEFI, but here goes:

As I understand it, most systems still let you turn off UEFI. What would happen if you turned it off and you tried to boot from the original drive? Windows might configure itself so it works without expecting UEFI to be there and functional. Once the drive is cloned (in that state), nobody along the chain should care that (perhaps) some UEFI bits don't get carried over during the cloning process (since it was disabled). Assuming that's the case, you should then be able to boot from the drive, providing you leave UEFI turned off in the BIOS. If you're in a position to do anything with the original drive in the first place - I'm not sure what the full background story is.

That's my wild-ass theory, and I don't have much else to suggest for now, unfortunately. My only "real" (?) experience with UEFI consists of having it turned off temporarily a few years ago on my Surface tablet, and it complaining on a screen with a screaming red background (I don't remember why I had to turn it off - maybe a firmware update)...but it got turned back on after that, so that went away.

I don't think I've ever used UEFI in its "fully turned on" mode after that on any of my machines. Or at least have tried to clone a drive while UEFI was enabled...

[Edit]

Randor, just above me, put it way more succinctly than I apparently have the ability to express. I knew there was a setting in Windows itself for that, but couldn't remember. I have a good feeling about his suggestion.

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

kmoorevs1-Feb-20 10:52

kmoorevs

1-Feb-20 10:52

Family IT work is the pits...all that pain for nothing! I'm watching this thread as I'm planning on cloning this laptop's drive to a larger SSD with the added challenge that I need to resize partitions.

I'm currently running out of space in the OS partition mostly as a result of ever growing number of offline files. (it only shows red when it's offline) The current SSD in it was cloned from the original spinner. It definitely made it much better machine, but at the expense of disk space. This was also before I began living with a portable data drive which means I could actually just delete/resize partitions...but I already bought the new drive so I might as well use it. Smile | :)

Good luck and let us know if you get it working. Thumbs Up | :thumbsup:

"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

charlieg3-Feb-20 7:59

charlieg

3-Feb-20 7:59

Well, if you're using the old style of booting - MBR - the clone is trivial.

I'll be sure to update this thread once I have a solution.

Re: Cloning disks - UEFI hell

charlieg12-Mar-20 9:41

charlieg

12-Mar-20 9:41

Elephant it.

Dell support was useless; two backup companies were useless; and the general summary I could make on the situation is that no one really understands what is going on. For example, Acronis swears their s/w will clone a drive, but they cannot tell me why mine doesn't boot. Then they suggest making a bootable usb drive using their tools (with minimal instruction) and *that* won't boot.

Near as I can tell, people just randomly change $hit until they give up.

My beef is if Microsoft says, "Changing this setting may require a Windows re-install..." they should back that up with WHY. It's total BS.

In the end, I installed Windows 10 on the fresh SSD and gave up. I even asked my development laptop support group their take on UEFI: "Yeah, no, we don't enable that, causes too much trouble."

Half baked I say, half baked.

It has been a long time since I've had to use other people's code

honey the codewitch31-Jan-20 7:58

honey the codewitch

31-Jan-20 7:58

My latest experience was mostly a bad one. The code was a zoo, with scarcely any encapsulation or overarching design. It had clearly never been factored, nor had it been maintained in six years. Who was it that said "software rusts?" They're right.

But still, Rolex is done and posted, sooner than I expected. It's rough around the edges but I don't care because everything important works. It's an interim release anyway until I finish my own engine.

The good news is, it supports unicode and some additional regex features like anchors (important for things like C# preprocessor directives that must appear at the beginning of a line - not counting whitespace)

I also integrated it with Visual Studio, and I'm pretty proud of my integration.

For starters, I use it as out of process from visual studio so I didn't have to create hooks into the main program. I just pass command line arguments and capture output.

I used a little trick wherein I reference the Rolex.exe as a Referenced assembly (yes, you're allowed - in .net an assembly is an assembly so an exe is just a class lib with an entry point)

That way the binary is "tied" to the devstudio project, and even though it calls it out of proc, it will carry the assembly with it due to the reference. I couldn't have called it in proc, by calling Main() directly because then I couldn't capture output.

I also use a trick wherein i scan the current project to see if the shared library code was already generated so I don't generate it again. It's cool that visual studio lets you do that. I just wish they'd get rid of the grotty COM interfaces and go managed and clean up the API, but oh well.

Real programmers use butterflies

Re: It has been a long time since I've had to use other people's code

Eddy Vluggen31-Jan-20 11:51

Eddy Vluggen

31-Jan-20 11:51

honey the codewitch wrote:
Who was it that said "software rusts?" They're right.

That's nonsense; code is static. Your perception of it may change, the code doesn't. You can verify the MD5 over multiple years to confirm that.

honey the codewitch wrote:
I just wish they'd get rid of the grotty COM interfaces and go managed and clean up the API, but oh well.

Without COM, a lot of Windows would stop working, wouldn't it?

Others' people code can be a source of education as well as a source of frustration. Depends on who them other people be. As for simply using other peoples codes, well, I didn't write an OS yet.

Bastard Programmer from Hell Suspicious | :suss:

If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.

Re: It has been a long time since I've had to use other people's code

honey the codewitch31-Jan-20 12:07

honey the codewitch

31-Jan-20 12:07

Eddy Vluggen wrote:
That's nonsense; code is static.

I think the point of that quote is that

a) sourcecode lives or dies on how well it can be maintained and no matter how judicious you are, sometimes, code has maintenance issues and after 6 months or a year you may not know what you did.

b) software doesn't age well. demands changes quickly in the industry, with hardware changes and OS changes and the like not to mention just feature adds, the average software to be competitive needs to put out new versions regularly.

Eddy Vluggen wrote:
Without COM, a lot of Windows would stop working, wouldn't it?

Yes, but that's not the point of my statement. Visual Studio Extensibility interfaces are not Windows, and they don't need to be COM.

Real programmers use butterflies

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