using Ghost with WIN 98, 2000 and XP Pro 2

[neeboy27]

I beseech thee, wise IT experts...

I have 4 Dell Optiplexes that I am trying to setup with the 3 above operating systems; I am doing this for educational purposes. I have successfully set up the first machine; everything is dandy. Now I have tried to Ghost the entire hard drive to another machine. Windows 98 loads fine on the second machine, but WIN 2000 and XP Pro both freeze before the desktop is loaded. Symatec's "support" for Ghost is plain @#$%! so I am looking for help from generous souls such as yourself

I used FDISK to initally setup the partition for WIN 98, then used the setup routines in 2000 and XP Pro for partitioning and installation of those OS's. Like I said, everything works great on the first machine, but after Ghosting, WIN2000 and XP Pro don't function on the 2nd computer. Anyone have any ideas? If there is a better forum for this question please let me know that also.

 

[aznluvsmc]

You have to SysPrep the Windows 2000 and Windows XP images first. This allows Windows to run a mini-setup wizard that will re-scan the system for PnP devices.

What version of Ghost are you using?

Steven S.
MCSA
A+, Network+, Server+, i-Net+

 

[neeboy27]

thanks for all the information! I am using Ghost 2003, if that helps further narrow any responses.

 

[temporello]

As a protection against piracy Win2000,NT,XP use a so called SID (Security Identifier).And this is used to uniquely identify computers on a network.That's why these images have to be prepared before and after cloning.

However what I found is that your problem is the following:

This is from the Symantec website :

"Ghost may clone triple-boot or quadruple-boot computers by using the -IA or -IR switch; however, cloning triple-boot or quadruple-boot systems are not supported by Symantec.

 

[neeboy27]

Could someone please tell me where Sysprep is??

 

[aznluvsmc]

Sysprep is located on the Windows installation CD under \Support\Tools\Deploy.cab file.

Steven S.
MCSA
A+, Network+, Server+, i-Net+

 

[neeboy27]

Never mind my last post; I found sysprep. However, as I'm reading in my MCSE 70-270 book, it says to use sysprep, then the system will shut down, and I should use Ghost to create the image. How the heck do I do that if the machine is shut off?? I have to run Ghost on that machine to create the image! I'm missing something here...

 

[aznluvsmc]

When the computer shuts down, you would then boot up the computer with a Ghost boot disk and start the Ghost program from DOS. The ghost image file will still be in its proper format and then you can just transfer the hard disk image to a CD I guess.

At my company, we use Ghost 7.5 Corporate Edition and make use of the GhostCast server. After running Sysprep, the computer shutsdown and we then reboot it with a Ghost boot disk. When the computer starts we transfer the image on the client to the GhostCast server. When the client is then rebooted again after the transfer it will run through a Windows mini-Setup wizard to reconfigure itself.

Steven S.
MCSA
A+, Network+, Server+, i-Net+