bluethunder

Thank you for the info. I'll be sure to give this a try, but we have now started moving to Windows Vista... on some of the computers. I could not get Vista to run correctly in legacy mode, but the drivers were not an issue. I can say that we have not had a problem once a standard image is created with the Optiplex 755 and Windows XP. We still have an issue with Ghost 11 and creating a multiboot CD, but that's an issue for a separate post.

Thanks for the info. I have tried the Ghost boot wizard, but I was unable to get that to work. I will give the Windows PE 2 a try. The reason we need multiboot CD's is not all of our comptuers and laptops have the same NIC cards. Also, we have some machines that are not currently connected to our network. We have a method to image these, but we still need the CD's with drivers...and I personally do not want to have different sets of CD's laying around with different drivers when they can all be placed on one. Thank you.

I'll give that a try. One of the things I like about Ghost 11 is that it loads the Ghost executable into RAM. The problem is that it splits it up into 2 diskettes, and needs them both to load the executable. As you're aware, on previous versions, the executable may have been on one disk while everything else is on another.

Has anyone had any luck creating a Ghost multiboot CD with Ghost 11, a.k.a. Ghost Solution Suite 2.0. If so, I would greatly appreciate any information regarding this. We have Dell 745's that we have been using diskettes with when first imaging, and I would love to get back to CD's. Luckily, these came with floppy disk drives. Now that we have more 745's and some 755's that did not come with floppy drives. We do have some USB floppy drives, but it will take forever to image a lab. I know if I put it in legacy mode, it will pick up the CD, but I do not know how to make a muliboot CD with this version of Ghost. I have created mulitboot cd's with Ghost 8, but that seems to be the only one I can find information on. Thank you.

The issue with loading Windows XP on this particular computer has been resolved. Dell has an update for the BIOS, which adds legacy support. The SATA was switched to Legacy, and after using F6 to load the SATA drivers for the hard drive, it continued on with the installation as normal. I will post the problem with creating a multiboot cd in that forum.

We recently received a group of Dell Optiplex 755's, and I have ran into a small delimma. As we have not yet moved to Vista...thank goodness ...I am trying to load Windows XP w/SP2, and have ran into an issue with with the SATA drivers for the hard drive. At first, XP would start loading all of the drivers during the start of the setup process, but would blue screen once this process was completed. I went to Dell's website and downloaded the SATA drivers and placed them on a floppy. There are no floppy drives on this computer so I am using a USB floppy drive. Once the setup process started again, I did the F6 deal, and chose which driver would be needed, which is the Intel ® ICH9 SATA AHCI Controller for desktops. It continued on it's merry way, but once the hard drive had been formatted, it asked for the Matrix Storage driver. I could not progress any further, even after going to Intel's site and downloading the floppy utility that loads the necessary drivers, but it still would not work. I have had this problem before with a Gateway tablet, but was sent a file from them and was able to get by this part. I have checked other forums, and it appears others have had this same issue. Is a way to get what I need, or would it be easier just to try and slipstream a CD to include the drivers needed. If so, does anyone know a place with good directions on how to get this done. Also, has anyone had any luck creating a Ghost multiboot CD with Ghost 11, a.k.a. Ghost Solution Suite 2.0. If so, I would greatly appreciate any information regarding this. We have Dell 745's that we have been using diskettes with when first imaging, and I would love to get back to CD's. Now that we have these 755's, the issue is compounded. I know if I put it in legacy mode, it will pick up the CD, but I do not know how to make a muliboot CD with this version of Ghost. I have looked, and can only find info with Ghost 8. Thank you.

Romsempire -- All of the computers are the same. They are Dell Optiplex 745 towers made for Windows Vista, with a separate video card. Up until now, we have had no problems using sysprep, even when we had dual boots of 2000/XP. I know that since Vista does not use a boot.ini file, rather you must use BCDEdit, and you have to remove Vista from the boot.ini, could this cause an issue. Would it be best to run sysprep in Vista, as it gets set up under partition 1, and XP gets setup as partition 2? As we're all still learning the in's and out's of Vista, their new sysprep has thrown us a curve. Abaidullah -- In it's simplest form, sysprep is a utility that changes the SID. However, you can have it add the computer to your domain, set the time zone, enter the product key, set your administrator password, etc. You can do most anything with this, as it works as an unattended answer file. It is available for pretty much every version of Windows. As far as Ghost, you must have the newest version to work with Vista. That is Ghost 11, which comes with Ghost Solution Suite 2.

I have created a dual boot system with Windows XP SP 2 and Windows Vista on one hard drive. I ran sysprep on the XP partition and have deployed it to 21 other systems using Ghost Solution Suite 2 (Ghost 11). Once the imaging process was over, I rebooted each system, named them, and waited for them to reboot into XP, which is the default boot selection. However, once it went back to the XP O/S, it ran sysprep again, and continues to do so. As of yet, I have not been able to find a solution to this issue. I am also new to Vista, and have not been able to familiarize myself with the new sysprep. I would appreciate any help or advice on these two issues.