Systems Deployment

Hi Phil,

You can try ghost in this manner.
1)Install OS and all required software and keep the system ready.
2) Create a dos bootable floppy and copy ghost.exe to floppy.
3)Connect the other HDD as secondary to the prepared system.
4)Boot system with floppy and execute ghost.exe
5)Specify disk to disk and select primary HDD as source and destination as Secondary HDD.
6)Proceed with cloning. This will prepare the other HDD. Fix this disk to other system and start using.

PS: Ghost similar Hardware models. Dont try to ghost different hardware models.
Be careful while selecting source and destination.

Hope this helps you.

Cheers--MSV

Thanks for the reply but ive got laptops to i want to do this with so its not really a option, many thanks for posting though, Do u use Ghost?

Cheers

Phil

Which bootdisk did you make: Win9x? WinPE?
Does it freeze during bootup? CD Drivers load? NIC drivers load?
Is it freezing during Ghost phase itself? With GX280's, you'll have to turn off the DMA switch within ghost, AFAIR, otherwise Ghost chokes on cloning...

Hi Revizor

Thanks for the reply, the boot disk is a disk made in Windows 2000 using the Ghost Boot Wizard within Ghost, dont know if that answers your question or not, the system isnt getting anywere on boot up, its just starting im getting the F2 for BIOS prompt and then it goes black and you have a white dot in the top left corner flashing, ive left it for over 4 hrs and nothing else happens

Cant get any life out of it at all [8|]

Any Clues

Is the CD spinning?
Any chance of CD-ROM not being able to read the CD properly?

Sorry Revizor

When you say CD i assume you mean i should have the Ghost CD in do you, the drive isnt spinning and their is no CD in the drive either, is that my problem mate?

Phil

It's positively not a hardware malfunction? Does BIOS POST go all the way? Did you try resetting BIOS to factory defaults?

If it all started happening _after_ you laid down the image onto that HDD, then a few vectors of attack:
Image 2 Partition or Image 2 Disk?
What's your partition situation?
You didn't do funky stuff, like dynamic volumes, and there's no RAID, no boot managers, no remnants of non-Windows OS'es?
NTFS or FAT? Drive size/ system partition size?
See if you can boot off the PE disk and check boot.ini file - this may give you some leads.
Or, try "fdisk /mbr" off a bootable DOS disk, to eliminate some variables.

ok, well first things first . . .
youve built the machine the way you want it and run sysprep to the reboot stage?
ok if all thats done and it doesnt boot off floppy right, then its either a bung boot disk or something wrong with the pc
check out www.nu2.nu and download/create a barts boot disk, these things are very helpful
with that you should be able to boot the pc and map to a network drive using dos
on the network drive you can then access the ghost.exe and go from there - creating your image and dumping images on clone pc's
and if you find out now that your pc doesnt like booting from the floppy . . .using nero you can create a bootable cd using the floppy drive emulation which should solve that if its an issue

Hi Guys

Still having issue with this but things have moved on, ok now ive sorted the Ghost boot disk out, so the machine is now booting into Ghost, the only problem now is im clicking Local then Disk then To Image, the only drive i can see is my A: drive, i need to get access to my network server drive to put the image their, both the Computer im trying to do this on and the Server are in the GHOST workgroup and i can ping each machine from the other, does anyone know what im doing wrong this is starting to annoy me guys

Phil

If your got the NIC drivers up and running and being able to ping the server from the "boot-disk" client then you should be able to map the network resource through the console and then run ghost.exe, then you will be able to select the preferred drive.

Yer should be able to but cant, ive created a boot disk and its picking up the drivers for the nic card, its then booting into Ghost and onto the main menu, When you say "should be able to map the network resource through the console" were am i doing this? Is this within Ghost or is this somewere else, any chance of further info on this

Would be usefull if somebody could just give me a detailed list of the steps if poss, i guess somewere im going wrong along the way

Many thanks Guys

Phil

I imagine that the ghost.exe is run automatically through autoexec.bat. Remark that and make sure to run a command (console) prompt. net use blabla then launch ghost.exe

Thanks for the reply Angel

Im kinda new to Ghost and to be honest i havent a clue what your on about, i did change the autoexec.bat file to boot to a different place on the server but when it comes to putting in a command prompt i havent a clue

Could you give me a bit more info

Many Thanks for your help

Phil

If you have remarked the execution of ghost.exe within autoexec.bat you should only be present with a black screen called command prompt aka console in windows environment. Here you can map your network resource with net use <drive:> <\\server\share>. The drive you specified in the net use command will now be displayed when you launch ghost.exe.

Ok this is my Autoexec.bat file, were am i looking at

@echo off
SET TZ=GHO+00:00
prompt $p$g
\net\netbind.com
MOUSE.COM
echo Loading...
if %config% == FROMFLPY goto FLPYBOOT
if %config% == FROMCD goto CDBOOT

goto FAILED

:FLPYBOOT
echo Insert Ghost boot disk 2 (containing Ghost.exe)
pause
if exist a:\ghost\ghost.exe goto GHOSTFND
goto net use f: \\rlbnas03\images
FLPYBOOT

:CDBOOT
echo Insert Ghost boot disk 2 (containing Ghost.exe)
echo To run Ghost.exe from a hard disk or CD, press Ctrl-C at the following prompt
echo then change to the appropriate drive letter and type 'Ghost'
pause
if not exist b:\ghost\ghost.exe goto CDBOOT
b:
goto GHOSTFND

:GHOSTFND
cd \ghost
echo Loading...
GHOST.EXE
goto END

:FAILED
echo Unknown boot menu selection
goto END

:END

Many thanks [:)]

on the machine that will be storing the images, do you have a ghostsrv.exe file?
if so then you can run that to create a multicast session by selecting a "dump from client" option
you can also use ghostsrv to deploy the image to several clients at once so its a handy tool to get used to

if not try adding this to your autoexec.bat inbetween the lines \net\netbind.com and MOUSE.COM

net use x: \\server\share

you can replace x with whatever drive letter you like and of course the correct server and share name
see how you go

Thanks for the reply ictu

Im using a NAS server so cant exe the ghostsrv program on it, i have tryed to terminal server the server without success

I put the line into my autoexec.bat file and i still cant save a image to my server

Could somebody give me a step by step guide to how they would do this please its getting really anoying now [:@]

Thanks guys

Phil