Mordac85

I've never had to work from a disk image restored to a partition so you may be right. Don't you love the little things that get lost in all the docs!

I've just started following the World Cup, but hope the US will make a good show this year. Nice little app to help keep me up to date!

Actually, Ghost does not include all of the partition info when imaging a partition, only when imaging a disk. So the geomerty issue you're running into is more or less a "feature" of the Ghost partition imaging process. To include the MBR you have to image the disk with COPY or DUMP rather than the partition with PCOPY or PDUMP. The best resource I've found for all things related to Ghost is Radified's Guide. So it seems that if you need to cross to a different HAL, you'll need to stick w/an unattended install. But if the HAL's are the same you can sysprep a master and and make your base image.

You'll also need to factor in link speed to the sites since replication can be a major drain. Plus the number of users/objects in the site would need to be factored into whether it's cost effective to put a GC/DC in the site. Without a DC in the site, if you drop the link (for whatever reason) the user's won't be able to authenticate to the local resources so downtime would also be a concern. The HW you referenced seems fine for W2K3 server if you have enough RAM, but cluberti has listed some of the more important architectural specs to consider.

Sounds like an unattended install would work for you as well. There is so much tweaking available and methods for app installs that, with enough development work, it can work just as well as an image. And you would not have to worry about the HAL differences. As for the geomerty in the MBR, I've never run into an issue with this using Ghost. Therefore, I've never looked into it. Am I just lucky or is there something there I should be looking out for?

Two things. First why not adjust the vb script to optput the list prefixed with the loopback address to replace your hosts file. That would save you a bunch of time and eliminate any possible "extras" from the run through Excel. Second, how do you resolve other, non-porn hosts if you aren't using DNS?

You need to use FAT32 for the temp partition, NTFS won't work. Don't worry about the NTFS before your install as long as you've setup the answer file correctly it'll do the job for you. As a test, you might want to place your install files on a second HDD and slave it into your test system. Adjust your routine and test from there. The speed difference will be amazing and make working out the bugs a whole lot faster too. Once everything is worked out on the slaved drive it's a simple matter to transfer that to a network share. That way you know the install routine and file source is working and any other issues will be in your network connection. Sorry I didn't get back earlier but as you probably found out netbind.com, tcptsr.exe, and tinyrfc.exe are part of the DOS MSClient for setting up networking and TCP/IP.

Like I said, I'm not sure if you can do it all in one step. If you need to reboot after creating the partitions you'll have to create some kind of detection routine in your batch to automate the process. Maybe parse the output of gdisk /status to look for your partitons? As for installing Ghost that's no problem, but you don't have to install it to make an image of a drive or partition. For an immediate Ghost backup to the D partition you'll have to do that with another boot disk since you can't image the partition you booted from. Bartpe or a DOS floppy will do tho.

Use a line for each action you want gdisk to run: rem Wipe the drive gdisk 1 /del /all rem Clear the boot record gdisk 1 /mbr rem Create a 4GB partition at the end of the drive gdisk 1 /cre /pri /sz:4000 /end rem Create a system partition w/the rest gdisk 1 /cre /pri /sure rem Make the first partition active gdisk 1 /act /p:1 I'm not sure, and you'd have to test it, but I think you may need to reboot before running the unattended install so the partitions are visible to the Windows setup.

No, that shouldn't matter for this test b/c you can re-home those special folders. You just may need to restore that pointer when you're done. The main profile directory is C:\Documents and Settings. Under that should be a folder for every account that has logged into the system, and a few hidden system folders. What you need to do is log in under another admin account. Cruise to C:\Documents and Settings and rename the problem folder, say Mordac85, to something else like Mordac85.old. So when the account logs in again, the Mordac85 profile directory referenced in the registry (in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\<Account SID>\ProfileImagePath) is not there and Windows creates a fresh one using the hidden folder C:\Documents and Settings\Default Users as a template. That's the simple way to troubleshoot a corrupt profile. If the new profile doesn't fix things you could log in under the other admin account and copy the working profile to Default Users. Go to Sysptem Properties, Advanced tab under User Profile settings to copy it. Then re-create the other profile as before. Just remember to set the 'Permitted to use' to Everyone when copying over the Default Users profile or you'll run into other issues.

Sounds like a plan. It's definately related to the system's ability to access the drive after the boot which means the drivers are the key. I found some drivers here, but the vendor doesn't even list this controller anymore so who knows what the latest version is. Let us know how it turns out.

Sounds like a problem w/accessing the drive or a HAL issue. Are you using the most current mass storage drivers for your drive on the install?

This seems OT, but on the whole I believe we would most likely be in the same situation. It isn't the products so much as the business practices that have gotten M$ insinuated into everything. The ability to create standards in their favor and push them down the world's collective throat and the fact Apple wasn't as aggressive in securing market share have left them on top of the heap, for now. Since (insert fav linux distro here) isn't really ready to replace Windows as the desktop for the majority of users, I think there would be a mad rush to fill the void w/a clone. Kinda reminds me of the rush to produce low cost PC's when IBM's high priced system became a hit.

Depends on what you call 'hurt'. Gdisk is like a command line version of fdisk. You can wipe a drive, re-partition it, hide or activate partitions, etc all from the command line. Of course this will mean any data is pretty much unrecoverable unless you backed up the original parition table. The thing is to perform these additional steps you have to move to a scripted solution b/c the unattended answer file doesn't cover it all. It would be nice if it had a section for running commands BEFORE the unattended setup they way they did for after it, but it just wasn't a major concern for Microsoft to build in such functionality since a batch file does the same thing.

If you wish to overwrite new Profile A with Profile B then all you need to do is copy it using the User Profile Settings under System Properties. Login under an admin account (other than A or B) and use the 'Copy to' button. Be sure to set the 'Permitted to use' field to the respective account (B). mhc is right and you are obviously logging in as one of the two accounts. Create a third account, grant it admin rights and copy away.

You could also use something like Ghost's Gdisk utility in a batch or script to create your partitions and then kick off the unattended install to the first partition. More complex, but IcemanND is right. M$ didn't design the answer file to be that flexible.

The Server service and Computer Browser service need to be running for your system to offer F&P services. Also, have you tried running the installer under the local admin account? I've run into some crappy logic checks that only worked when I was logged in as the local admin. One app kept telling me to log in w/an admin account even though I was an admin.

The quick and easy way is to log in as an admin other than the account you're having problems with, and rename the top level profile directory under C:\Documents and Settings. Then log in as the troubled account and see if that did the trick. If not you can reverse the procedure and restore the original. Also, you may want to see if the apps you're having problems with are installed under the user's profile. Some apps install themselves under the user profile of the account that ran the install. Our SAP client is like this and it's apain in the rear. Check under Docs & Settings for the program folder under the profiles Start Menu directories. If that's the case you should only need to re-run the installer under the fubarred acocunt to restore the settings.

If you change the Folder options and clear the "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" flag you should now be able to see every file on your system. Unless you have the "Remember each folders view settings" checked, then you'll have to apply the change and then apply to all folders. Or clear the Remember flag....

Since you want to maintain the flexibility of changing the files per build I would create a boot disk that can either ask the user for the variable data and create the finished answer file on the fly before kicking off the install. This way the batch file doesn't need to change everytime and it will be fine as the boot source for a CD/DVD. You could use a ram drive as a staging area for all of the file manipulation, but if that's the case why not just leave the fields in the answer file blank and input the data as part of the build process? On the other hand, you can map to a network drive as part of your autoexec.bat and pull in, or reference, the already edited answer file from your network share as needed. This is a quick C&P from my old boot floppy where I logged into our domain and mapped the drive (I know there are easier ways to do this but it's a good example of what I mean). net initialize netbind.com tcptsr.exe tinyrfc.exe net logon USERNAME PASSWORD /domain:DOMAIN /yes /savepw:no < password.txt net use Z: \\SERVER\SHARE /persistent:no winnt32 /unattend:Z:\computername.txt /s:d:\i386 If you really want to get creative you could script a method to derive the fields from existing data on the PC or connect to a database that either already has the info defined and create the file on the fly. Like the Perl guys say, "There's more than one way to do it" and it really depends on how you want to implement it. How many systems per month are you building and how automated do you want the process to be? If you have to manually edit the answer file for each system you're going to run into a bottleneck at some point. Right now there are only 2 fields we manually enter, computername and the end user's name. Everything else is automated and the tech only has to complete those. Not a big deal for us, but what fits for you?

To my knowledge, this can't be done on XP Pro. I work in a domain for the most part, and have not run XP Home, but in both the screen saver locks the workstation, it doesn't log you out. Now there were some screensavers that would do that, but I never could get them to work reliably. On the screensaver tab in display properties, is the option to secure it checked (like the attached pic shows)?

I've never seen where you can use multiple answer files, or tried it for that matter. I guess you could script the creation of an answer file then kick off the install. One way or antoher you'll have to add the system specific info somewhere.

Sorta similar to what most people do is to use an install base (from a CD or network share) and they run winnt32 w/the switches to point to the correct files like so: winnt32 /unattend:<answer file> /s:<install source>You can find more info on that technique in the MS Deployment Guide I started off by placing mine on an IDE drive (formatted FAT32), slaved it into the new system and adjusted my boot floppy as needed. I preferred the clean installs but corporate decreed we shall use images. So.... IMHO, it's much easier to leave certain fields in the answer file blank, like computername, and have that be the only prompt on my build. Anything not covered by the answer file is scripted and executed using GUIRunOnce or RunOnceEx. Not a totally automated solution, but you could put the effort into making it automated.

I'll assume the required SATA drivers are loaded by your statement. Are you getting a Stop 0x0000007B? If so it may be a problem w/the HAL you're using on the image.

Assuming these are standard installs from the vendor's sites, and you've confirmed that it isn't actually installed, have you checked the event logs or any other installer logs to see if there is more detail about what is going on? Installer logs can normally be found in %temp% but you could search your drive for files modified today. If they are modified packages, you may need to read up on how to install them properly.