ghosting

[crabby117]

In the distant past, I used Norton's Ghost software to create images of win98 and winnt workstations for my company. It made rollout of new machines MUCH more efficient.

I haven't used the product in over two years and now that XP is around, I was wondering if there are any issues with Ghosting technology in terms of the MS activation requirements. If I create a PC and get it configured with all the software we need, and activate XP (and the Office suite), will I be able to use that image to roll out new PC's?

I'm no longer with the company I used to use Ghost with. That company had the luxury of buying mostly corporate edition software. Now I work as an independent consultant supporting mostly small companies which buy retail packages of software, including winxp. So I thought that MS activation requirements might throw a wrench into the image restoration process.

Thx.

 

[rye8261]

I dont have the newest version of ghost either but the one that i do have does not work with windows XP. But thats not the point, if you got something that did work to copy it from drive to drive then you can run the sysprep utility available on the 2003 server disk or at microsoft's site. this program makes you type in the windows serial on a reboot.

hope this helps some.

 

[G0AOZ]

Not tried Ghost, but PowerQuest's Drive Image v5 works fine with XP Pro images here...


ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[dweebhq]

So far, I've found that versions of Norton Ghost prior to Ghost 2002 do not work with WinXP and NTFS. A good workaround is to install your reference image using FAT32 and use Ghost to image it. You can then clone your machines and convert them to NTFS later.

Ghost 2002 will create images, but only if the drive is a basic drive. Once you change to a dynamic drive, forget it!

I have yet to find a good way to clone dynamic drives. If you know of or find something that works, please let me know!

 

[techwtr]

I use ghost to create images for all our pc's. Makes for rolling out pc's so much easier as well as when you have to rebuild a pc due to some problem. We just started rolling out XP a year ago. Ghost works just fine. I believe when went to XP images I had to start using Ghost 7.5 I believe that is the version.

Not only is ghost used to make basic images to rebuild or aid in pc deploy, but I also use ghost to image pc's that have special settings ( such as a print server). This way in the event of hardware failure, you can quickly pull out another like model pc and put the image on that workstation. Print Server back in business.

One thing of note, I wouldn't recommend that you include in your images software that require a license. All a image should have is the operating system and all the necessary setups and registry settings for the machine to work in your office. Other software is normally added after the fact. That way you are accurate with your licensing.

 

[ashleym]

techwtr, how do you get around the windows licensing? Do you register windows, activate?

If you reister office how will that affect the rest of the images if it is registered?

Is the master machine joined to the domain or not?

Thanks

AM