dlevens

MilkyMagic, I have not seen that error yet. So far the cds we made work on every hardware we tried. Maybe start from scratch and make a new set to make sure you did not miss something? Dennis

Thanks for the input. So far I have had no luck with either mkisofs or cdimage. Best I have gotten so far is using cdimage, which allows me to boot the CD to the UBCD menu and I can choose the Windows UBCD from the menu and it acutally boots but the INSERT Knoppix which uses ISOLINUX no longer works. Says it cannot find INSERT filesystem So far this is what I am using for cdimage cdimage.exe -l"UBCDCombo" -h -n -b"D:\BootCDs\ComboUBCD\ComboUBCD\boot\loader.bin" -o -m "D:\BootCDs\ComboUBCD\ComboUBCD" "D:\BootCDs\ComboUBCD\iso\comboubcdv52.iso" Combining these two UBCDs seems like such a powerful CD, curious why there are not others who have done it yet. Still trying, Dennis

Hey everyone, was hoping someone here could clear things up for me. I am trying to combine two ultimate boot cds. One is the original UBCD the other is the UBCD4Windows. I am playing around with mkisofs and cdimage and had a few questions: 1. Curious which program everyone here would recommend as the ideal way to build the iso? 2. Where can I download the latest version or mkisofs as there seems to be many different versions out there? 3. Is the cdimagegui beta 3 the one to use if using cdimage? There is a thread started on how to possibly accomplish this but I ran into some issues with making the iso portion. So far I have come up with this command line for cdimage 2.47 but not sure if this is the best way to do it. cdimage.exe -l"UBCDCombo" -h -n -b"D:\Boot CDs\ComboUBCD\ComboUBCD\boot\loader.bin" -o -m "D:\Boot CDs\ComboUBCD\ComboUBCD" "D:\Boot CDs\ComboUBCD\iso\comboubcdv52.iso" Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Dennis Levens

I came up with this guide to make it as easy as possible to deploy ghost images from CDs. I prefer to use unicasting or multicasting whenever possible but there are times when a CD set is needed. I have received a lot of help on these forums and wanted to give a little back. This guide will help you to take a large ghost image and span it on to CDs with the first CD being bootable. Also the first CD contains ghost.exe and autoloads ghosts to deploy the image. I am currently using Symantec Ghost 8 Corporate but this process should work for most versions of Ghost. SPANNING YOUR IMAGE =================== 1. Open up the ghost image to deploy in ghost explorer 2. Select view | options | set a span split to fit your cd media 3. Select File | compile and save your image MAKING YOUR FLOPPY IMAGE ======================== 1. Start with a Windows ME boot disk and keep only these files AUTOEXEC.BAT CD1.SYS CONFIG.SYS MOUSE.COM (get this from disk 1 of a ghost boot floppy) MOUSE.INI (get this from disk 1 of a ghost boot floppy) MSCDEX.EXE IO.SYS MSDOS.SYS COMMAND.COM 2. Change your autoexec.bat to match the following: @echo off MSCDEX.EXE /D:tomato /L:R SET TZ=GHO+08:00 prompt $p$g MOUSE.COM for %%i in (r:\*.gho) do set image=%%i echo Loading... \ghost\ghost.exe -clone,mode=load,src=%image%,dst=1 -rb NOTE: If you do not want to auto deploy the image then remove the parameters after ghost.exe 3. Change your config.sys to match the following: FILES=30 BUFFERS=20 DEVICE=cd1.SYS /D:tomato LASTDRIVE=Z 4. Make an image of your floppy using WinImage a. Open WinImage then click on Disk | Read Disk b. Click on Image | Change Format and select 2.88 c. Drag and Drop the Ghost folder including ghost.exe from disk 2 of a ghost boot disk set d. save your image as a .ima image MAKING CD1 YOUR BOOTABLE CD =========================== 1. Open Ahead Nero Burning ROM and choose bootable CD "CD-ROM (Boot)" 2. From the boot tab put a check in image file and browse to your .ima file 3. Put a check in "enable expert settings" and change emulation to 2.88 4. Click on new 5. Drag and drop the first *.gho image from your spanned ghost image 6. Burn your CD MAKING CD2-CDx GHOST CDs ======================== 1. Open Ahead Nero Burning ROM and choose "CD-ROM (ISO)" 2. Click on new 3. Drag and drop the next *.ghs image from your spanned ghost image 4. Burn your CD DONE Just take your CD set now and put in CD1 and let it rip. Ghost will ask you for the next CD when it is ready for it. Dennis

Yeah I tried a hex editor and it was too garbled to make much sense of it. I do have the bart network boot disk already working and setup to run from my usb flash pen drive but I like how fast the symantec ghost pcidet.dos works for ghost and wanted to have that as well. I can already make it work but I have to keep the net folder on the root of my pen drive. This really is not a big deal but my goal was to make a nice clean ultimate pen drive boot disk by moving every boot disk to thier own folders under a boot folder like this boot/98 boot/bartnbd boot/ghost And then I keep only the autoexec.bat, io.sys and config.sys on the root of the pen drive. Using config.sys for my menu to choose which boot folder to run and then using autoexec.bat to call the right batch file to kick it off. This works great but I cannot move the net folder for ghost off the root without modifying this pcinet.dos file. Oh well I can keep it on root for now. Dennis

I have no idea where to post this question, hoping someone here might be able to point me in the right direction. I am trying to edit or at least read a file called pcidet.dos that symantec ghost boot disk uses to detect network cards. There is code in it that copies files from one folder to another depending on what network card it finds. I am trying to incorporate this into my master boot disk but if I move the net folder from the root of the drive this pcidet.dos fails to copy the files. I am trying to open it up and modify it to tell it where the folder is it should copy to. So far when I open it up in textpad or even a hex editor I see a lot of numbers on the left and some garbled words on the right. So I assumed this meant it was in hex? If anyone can show me how to read this and edit it I would greatly appreciate it. I have attached the file. Dennis

Interesting info, So sysprep will run the commands in C:\Sysprep\i386\$OEM$\cmdlines.txt but will not copy anything in C:\Sysprep\i386\$OEM$\$1 I guess there is really no point since I could just copy the files myself before I sysprep. I was hoping to make it work so I can use the same structure for both unattended and sysprep. I also find it odd that with unattended installs you are supposed to put the $OEM$ at the same level at i386 but for sysprep you are supposed to put the $OEM$ inside the i386. Also my C:\Sysprep\i386 folder is pretty much empty as it only contains the $OEM$. Does this seem right? Unattended is so much easier I wish this company would let ghost and sysprep die. hehe Dennis

Please note I am using sysprep.inf and not unattended. I cannot get my folders in $1 to copy to the C drive. I am using ghost to deploy my image and have the following structure on C drive before I run sysprep. This is my Windows 2000 image. I install a raw image then run sysprep. Here is my file structure. C:\Drivers\(all of my indivudual hardware folders with drivers are here) C:\Sysprep\sysprep.inf C:\Sysprep\i386\$OEM$\cmdlines.txt C:\Sysprep\i386\$OEM$\$$\System32\(I have reg.exe, cmdow.exe, shutdown.exe) C:\Sysprep\i386\$OEM$\$1\Install\(I have RunOnceEx.cmd here) Here is a copy of my sysprep.inf ;SetupMgrTag [Unattended] OemPreinstall = Yes ConfirmHardware = No OverwriteOemFilesOnupgrade = No OemSkipEula = Yes TargetPath = WINNT DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore OemPnPDriversPath = Drivers\000_intel_INF;Drivers\001_Network;Drivers\002_Sound;Drivers\003_Video;Drivers\004_Other InstallFilesPath = C:\Sysprep\i386 CrushDumpSetting = 1 KeepPageFile = 0 ExtendOemPartition = 1 [GuiUnattended] EncryptedAdminPassword = NO AutoLogon = Yes AutoLogonCount = 3 OEMSkipRegional = 1 OEMSkipWelcome = 1 TimeZone = 4 [UserData] ; ProductID = FullName = "xx" OrgName = "xx" [Display] BitsPerPel = 24 Xresolution = 1024 YResolution = 768 [TapiLocation] AreaCode = 909 [SetupMgr] DistFolder = C:\sysprep\i386 DistShare = whistlerdist [Identification] JoinWorkgroup = WORKGROUP [Networking] InstallDefaultComponents = Yes [GuiRunOnce] Command1="%systemdrive%\Install\RunOnceEx.cmd" [Sysprep] BuildMassStorageSection=Yes [SysprepMassStorage] Why are the folders not copying to C? I have a feeling my folder structure is wrong. I already have my unattended working but the folder structure is different since it is coming from a CDROM and the $OEM$ is on the same level as i386. But for sysprep.inf I seem to recall that the structure is $OEM$ inside the i386 folder? Dennis

Thanks, that helps alot. Will give it a try now and see if it is easier than my RunOnceEx.cmd. Dennis

Being new to WPI I am not sure how to create these two files, and since they do not exist anymore in the package I am lost. Can someone give me the code to recreate these two .cmd files? Dennis

I do have a PE disk up and running and have diskpart but so far am not able to format with 4k clusters in fat32 and diskpart does not support a function like cvtarea. Dennis

Hey guys, I was hoping to get some expert advice on the best way to prep my system before install. I am looking to find a way to create a single large FAT32 volume in 4k clusters and with the cvtarea switch so that I am ready to convert to NTFS when the time comes. I have played around with oformat and cvtarea and there are so many steps and not possible to script well using microsofts way. I like AEFDISK but you have to but it if you want the /cvtarea function. Freedos seems to do it ok using format c: /a /q /u /z:seriously then following up after a reboot to use microsoft cvtarea c:\cvtarea.tmp 500 MB /contig /firstcluster 3 gb But this process is 4 reboots. One for fdisk wipe, one for fdisk create, one for format, and one for cvtarea. AEFDISK seems like it can do it all in one shot but you have to buy it. Anyone played with gdisk? I have a copy of ghost 8 but not sure how to use gdisk to do all this. Or anyone suggest a better way? My image needs to stay fat32 because we are always adding and removing files, drivers etc to our ghost image using ghost explorer. After we deploy we use the convert command which converts fat32 to NTFS in like 5 seconds as long as you format using 4k cluster and cvtarea. Otherwise convert takes like 25 minutes. Any suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated. Dennis

big_gie Do you know if APE2K3 or any other option can handle an image of an XP MS-DOS startup disk? I have had no luck with memdisk. I want to add an image of the xp floppy since it is the only way to use the fdisk from ME and then be able to format using oformat and cvtaera. Dennis

Nielson, I have been trying for the past few days to find a way to automate the process outlined at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/winpr...preinstall.mspx So far I have not been successful. I cannot even get the floppy I created to load as an .img image using memdisk. I want to add this oformat & cvtara to my ultimatebootcd but so far cannot do that either. Do you know of anyway this process can be automated? Dennis

Raja, That makes sense now. I do now finally see the benefit in that approach. As you mentioned my only concern would be the auto detect portion and the fact that the script kicks in a little late to have it come up clean without windows detecting and asking for drivers. I do see that the script would kick in and reboot to handle that though. Right now my approach seems to be working and is very clean. I have finally solved a lot of the driver issues bumping into each other by keeping my 2000 drivers and XP drivers seperate. I was getting too greedy by trying to have one driver solution for both. I have also discovered that many hardware types can be combined, for isntance I now have successfully built an IBM thinkpad driver folder for windows 2000 that covers all sound, video, modem, lan into one folder for model T20, T21, T22, T23, T30 and T41. The benefit in this approach is there is no script needed for auto detect and no extra reboot. Plus the system logs in on first log in with all drivers installed and not one pop up for hardware. Very clean and all drivers are signed and certified. I do appreciate all the time you have taken to respond to my questions, and I see from another thread you pointed me to the unattended guide. Very nice guide, so I will start working on my unattended CD to handel building our master images. If I have questions on either approach you might here from me Dennis

Raja, we meet again. Just to add to this discussion I agree that both combined can be very powerful. IMAGING ----------- I started out with this process for a large company and have discovered many of the problems with HAL and drivers can be overcome. After many hours of trial and error this seems to be the most successful when: 1. You build your master image on a box that installs using HAL ACPI Uniprocessor PC 2. Then change that HAL in device manager to Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC 3. Then Sysprep Doing this solves the HAL problems between old systems, new systems, laptops and even hyperthreading cpu. This is because the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC HAL works on all hardware. Once you deploy your image via ghost to a new box that would normal use the uni or multi hal all you do in XP is go to device manager and rollback driver on the HAL and reboot. You do the exact same process on hyperthreading boxes but you have to reboot twice. First reboot puts you on uni hal second reboot puts you to multi hal. If you build your master image in fat32 you can even open the image with ghost explorer and replace the 3 HAL files to be anything you want if you want but note that if it is anything but Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC then you have to be careful where you deploy it to. laptops will not boot if you chave the hal to uni or multi. And multi hals will not work on uni. I am still tweaking the process but need to find a way to format using oformat and convert to ntfs as cleanly as possible. Since I use sysprep I cannot use the unattended FileSystem = ConvertNTFS since that is not valid for sysprep. I am still trying to solve this as I need fat32 to be able to open my image in ghost explorer and add and remove files without having to ghost the ram image to my test box then delete or add files and then sysprep all over again. Keeping my images fat32 and then converting allows me to add drivers or files by opening the image up in ghost explorer and making the changes direct. This process allows one image to work on all hardware using imaging as a solution. For drivers I recommend keeping windows 2000 seperate from windows xp but you can pretty much combine all of the drivers needed to cover all laptos and desktops. You can seperate the drivers in folders by hardware type and throw all sound, lan, video etc in the root of that folder. UNATTENDED ---------------- I need some guidance on how to get started building my first unattended image for windows xp slipstreamed to sp2. I can definately see how this process is easiest to maintain and best to use for building your master images. Can anyone point me to a guide with a step by step best practice for doing unattended? I can already I would need to copy my slip stream XP SP2 cd to a folder then modify and somehow remake the iso. Ideally if someone has a guide with a nice unattended template to get me started that would be most helpful. Dennis

Raja, To briefly explain I see a problem because the batch file will create a nice sysprep image only for that one hardware. Even though I would have all my drivers for all my hardware on the root of C when I run the batch file for say a Thinkpad laptop then I only end up with a sysprep image that I can deploy to thinkpad laptops. We are trying for 1 final sysprep image that works for all hardware. In the end we want 1 master image before sysprep and 1 final sysprep image that we can deploy to all hardware types. Dennis

Interesting. I am starting to see some issues, not many with 2k combined with xp. Mainly the wireless drivers are not liking each other. Also curious if you rip out all your hardware on your master box before running sysprep? I currently deploy using the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC which works on all hardware. Then on uni systems for xp I just rollback and reboot and same for mutli hal systems but after rolling to uni it auto detects to multi. Seems to work great for hal issues. If I understand your driver layout you dump all drivers for all hardware into the same folder? so all windows 2k drivers for desktops go in same folder? No problems with video or network drivers bumping into each other? Dennis

Jazkal, Curious how you worked out the driver and HAL issues for your one image? I was able to solve the different HAL issues but am having a nightmare of a time trying to get all the drivers to isntall without bumping into each other. I first tried organizing the drivers by type like sound, video, network but too many problems. So am trying by hardware type but thats gonna make my oempnpdriverspath very long. We have a ton of ibm laptops and desktops and gateway machines. Also we want to use one driver package that will work with all hardware and both xp and 2k. Dennis

Raja, Thanks for the info. However, this would only work if we sysprep and create a seperate image for each hardware type. We are tying to avoid this. We want one image for all hardware types with all drivers in the oempnpdrivers path. Dennis

Hey guys, Soooooo glad I found this forum. Some great stuff here. I am helping to update the ghosting process at a company I contracting for and have successfully condensed about 40 images down to 2. We have one for XP and one for 2000 that works on all laptops, desktops, even hyper threaded boxes. My problem is I think chose a bad layout for drivers. Currently I do the following: C:\Drivers\Sysprep\ intelinf-2k intelinf-xp network other sound video C:\sysprep\ cvtarea.exe deploy.chm deploy.chw factory.exe i386 oformat.com readme.txt ref.chm setupcl.exe setupmgr.chm setupmgr.exe sysprep.exe sysprep.inf i386\$oem$ i386\$oem$\cmdlines.txt What I do is build the RAW image on a box that defaults to the ACPI Uniprocessor PC HAL then before I sysprep I change the HAL to Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC and reboot then I sysprep. This allows me to deploy to any hardware. After I deploy to newer hardware that can run the UNI HAL all I do in XP is rollback the hal and 3 seconds and reboot I am back to the UNI hal. And if it is a Multi CPU or hyperthread box as soon as I reboot after rolling back to the UNI Hal it auto detects and installs the MULTI Hal. This is working great. NOW for my issue. I am trying to find a way to handle all the driver issues. Right now we have a ton of older gateway systems as slow as 500Mhz, a ton of new ibm thinkcenters and netvistas as well as a ton of thinkpad laptops from T22 up to T41. As you can see from my driver layout I was trying to put all of the sound drivers in sound and video in video but as you can imagine this is causing problems. I fix one system so it installs great but then another system using a similar but newer sound driver will fail. I want to use only signed drivers and have all machines come up with all drivers installed and not ask to even click finish to complete a driver install. What is the best practice for doing this? At the moment I am sorta stuck having to use sysprep and symantec ghost 8. I could seperate all the drivers based on hardware, like e3400, T22, 8183 etc and dump all drivers like sound, video, network etc in the folder it belongs but then my oempnpdriverspath will be huge. Any suggestions or pointers will be appreciated. Dennis Levens

Thanks for the info. Something new I have never seen before. Good to know. Dennis

Nielson, I am little confused. I do now understand that FileSystem = ConvertNTFS is not valid for sysprep and only works in unattended.txt but not sure how I would incorporate the oformat tool and the convert command line tool into what I am doing? Or am I already doing this? By the command line convert tool do they mean the entry I am already using here: [GuiRunOnce] Command1="cmd /c convert.exe c: /fs:ntfs /v" Also when I made the original image I formatted fat32 using the XP CD. Is that the oformat tool? The main reason for all this mess is we want our ghost sysprep images fat32 so we can insert and update drivers and replace HAL files etc. Then convert to NTFS after we deploy. Dennis

I am using sysprep 1.1 for 2K images and sysprep 2.0 for XP images. My problem is I cannot get FileSystem=ConvertNTFS to work. No matter what I try this line never converts to NTFS. I instead have to use this line to make this happen after first login. [GuiRunOnce] Command1="cmd /c convert.exe c: /fs:ntfs /v" Anyone seen this problem? Dennis Here is a copy of my sysprep.inf for XP --------------------------------------------- ;SetupMgrTag [unattended] FileSystem=ConvertNTFS OemPreinstall = Yes ConfirmHardware = No OverwriteOemFilesOnupgrade = No OemSkipEula = Yes TargetPath = WINDOWS DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore OemPnPDriversPath = i386;Drivers\Sysprep\intelinf-xp;Drivers\Sysprep\video;Drivers\Sysprep\sound;Drivers\Sysprep\network;Drivers\Sysprep\other InstallFilesPath = C:\Sysprep\i386 CrushDumpSetting = 1 KeepPageFile = 0 ExtendOemPartition = 1 [GuiUnattended] EncryptedAdminPassword = NO AutoLogon = Yes AutoLogonCount = 3 OEMSkipRegional = 1 OEMSkipWelcome = 1 OEMDuplicatorstring = "ADP Internal WSS Image 1.0.0 09-02-2004" TimeZone = 4 [userData] FullName = "Workstation Support" OrgName = "Automatic Data Processing" [Display] BitsPerPel = 24 Xresolution = 1024 YResolution = 768 [TapiLocation] AreaCode = 909 [setupMgr] DistFolder = C:\sysprep\i386 DistShare = whistlerdist [identification] JoinWorkgroup = WORKGROUP [Networking] InstallDefaultComponents = Yes [GuiRunOnce] Command1="cmd /c convert.exe c: /fs:ntfs /v" [sysprep] BuildMassStorageSection=Yes

Professor, I am curious, how did you get this line to work? FileSystem=ConvertNTFS No matter what I try this line never converts to NTFS. I instead have to use this line to make this happen after first login. [GuiRunOnce] Command1="cmd /c convert.exe c: /fs:ntfs /v" Dennis