MilkyMagic

Hello. I am trying to create a ghost boot CD that will boot successfully from a HP multi-bay CDRW/DVDROM external USB drive. I've created an MSDOS 6.22 diskette and obtained the panasonic USBASPI.SYS and USBCD.SYS drivers. This works great if you boot DOS from a diskette drive, as it successfully identifies the USB CD drive and assigns a drive letter via MSCDEX. Now here's the problem. I take an image of my working diskette with WINIMAGE, and use Nero to burn the image (an .IMA file) as a bootable CD. Now when I insert the bootable CD I created into the USB CD drive, and try to boot from it, DOS loads OK, initialises the USB and finds the USB drive, but then fails with "bad command or filename". It looks like once the USBASPI.SYS has got hold of the USB CD drive, DOS looses access to it and therefore the remaining part of config.sys/autoexec.bat can't run as it has no drive letter/access to it. Any ideas folks? I would love to have a ghost CD that can boot off a USB CD drive. Thanks.

Fixed it. Loaded Microsoft's MSI file into WinInstallLE. Changed the install check options so it doesn't try to check the version of Messenger running.

Hello. I have created a multi-language unattend XP SP2 installation using the Microsoft "MUI" Packs. I have installed Windows Messenger 5.0 which also has an MUI Pack. Messenger is running fine, but I am having problems getting the MUI pack for Messenger to install. The MUI Pack contains a single MSI file. I try to run the MSI install unattended as follows: start /wait msiexec /i WM5MUI.msi /qn The MSI installer starts but then it quits unexpectedly. When I view the MSI logfile, it seems to check for the exact version of Windows Messenger and then bomb out. This is weird because I have the right version of Messenger installed. Even weirder, if I manually just double-click the MSI and install it by hand, it works!! Has anyone else tried this? Please help! Thanks everyone.

Chris, Not sure on Ghost over RIS, but what I do is this: - Add XP base image to RIS server (via normal MS RIS setup) - Get hold of Windows PE (cut-down 32bit XP OS) - you need to be a select customer,etc to get this. not available thru oem channels,etc. - You can then add the Windows PE code to your RIS XP image. - You can then PXE remote boot over RIS into the Windows PE image. - Add the 32-bit "Ghost32.exe" file from symantec. - Call ghost32.exe and restore the image. I use this all the time to image and restore ghost images when my machines haven't got cdrom's/floppies. It's really quick too as you just boot up, hit F12, Windows PE loads really fast, and the ghost image restores under a 32-bit environment. You can also wipe/prepare the HD in Windows PE using "diskpart", and this is alot faster than DOS as it has proper 32-bit access to the hard drive. If you search Symantec's support website I think they have articles on ghost & RIS. I had a quick look but couldn't find a URL for you, but sure I have seen these articles before.

Thanks it works fine now - the ghost files were spanned and were written incorrectly for some reason. I've now created a bootable DVD with Nero 6 Reloaded, with your boot image files/config. One problem I find is that when I insert my bootable DVD (or bootable CD for that matter) and reboot the PC, it boots off the DVD with no chance to intervene. Ie, when I use a manufacturer's bootable CD normally you get the message: Press any key to boot from CD... The down side to this is that the PC boots off the DVD, restores the ghost image automatically, reboots automatically, and then boots off the DVD *AGAIN* and goes around in a loop, unless you are sitting at the PC to intervene. I was really hoping that it would not boot off the DVD if I didn't sit there and press any key when prompted. Is this something to do with the boot image/emulation specified in Nero? Any ideas? Thanks.

Thanks for your comprehensive guide - I've created the bootable CD. However, when Ghost launches off the CD it queries the Hard Drive and says "destination drive too small". I've tried this on different hardware. I know the HD's are OK as Ghost loads images to them fine if I boot ghost via RIS/Windows PE instead. Interestingly even if I use the built-in boot wizard CD/DVD Startup disk, i get the same error. Symantec say to try using GHOST -OR to stop ghost checking the destination disk, but this does not fix the problem. Did you come across this problem/any idea how to fix it? Thanks alot for your help.