A file system restore of System State data (Shadow Copy Components) along with a complete restore of Boot and System volume of a Windows 2008 server to another server with dissimilar hardware may result in a non-bootable…
Problem
A file system restore using Veritas Netbackup to perform a Disater Recovery of a Windows based system to another server with dissimilar hardware may result in a non-bootable Operating system.
Error Message
The recovered system may fail to boot; get struck on a blue screen or display a Microsoft error code on reboot after a successful restore.
Cause
A hardware abstraction layer (HAL) is a layer of programming that allows the operating system to interact with a hardware device at a general or abstract level rather than at a detailed hardware level. The HAL abstracts low-level hardware details from the operating system and provides a common programming interface to devices of the same type (such as video adapters).
HAL, on Microsoft operating systems since Windows 2000, is implemented via the kernel-mode hal.dll module. HAL also prevents applications from directly accessing the system memory, CPU, or hardware devices - a method that can prevent many device conflicts and crashes. By default, the Hal.dll is not backed up as part of system state, however the Kernel32.dll is. Therefore, if we try to restore a backup onto a computer that requires a different HAL (for example, to support a multiprocessor environment) compatibility issues may arise between the new HAL and the original Kernel32.dll
Solution
A file system restore of System State data using Netbackup or Backup Exec is supported only when we are restoring to the original machine (same hardware). This is more of a limitation imposed by Microsoft’s HAL and is described in the article below….
Microsoft does not support restoring a system state backup from one computer to a second computer of a different make, model, or hardware configuration”
How to use NetBackup to perform a complete restore of Windows Server 2008 R2 and above without IDR or BMR
Applies To
This applies to all Windows OS (32 and 64 bit) since Windows 2000
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Please note that this document is a translation from English, and may have been machine-translated. It is possible that updates have been made to the original version after this document was translated and published. Veritas does not guarantee the accuracy regarding the completeness of the translation. You may also refer to the English Version of this knowledge base article for up-to-date information.