Jelorian

So my sister-in-law is home from college and asks me to take a look at her laptop. Apparently it got a virus and the system is pretty hosed. I want to create a bootable CD and run Norton AV from the command line. So I created a bootable CD using Nero and also added vpscan.exe and s-t-i-n-g-e-r.exe (renamed to stinger.exe). The CD boots but I can't see the 2 files I added. Back in the DOS/Windows 3.1 days I would boot from a floppy and run Mcaffee from the command line and it would find the viruses and get rid of them. Is there a better way to do this? I'm thinking that vpscan.exe is out of date, so I'm looking for a better command line scanner. I was also thinking of taking the HD out of the laptop and hooking it up to and IDE adapter so I could see it from my desktop PC and run NAV Corp Ed. 9.0 on it, but I don't have the adapter with me and I'd have to go buy one. Thanks for any advice and pointers. I've tried searching past posts, but I'm unable to find the answer I need. Jel

I'd like to thank everyone for their help, replies, and suggestions. I ended up using sysprep and another imaging software package called True Image 8.0 Build 859 made by Acronis. Luckily for me I can boot the systems with True Image's Recovery Manager CD, image my sysprep'd machine and upload it to a network share (1). I was able to download the sysprep'd image to a new PC and it booted fine (True Image even recognized my SATA RAID 1). I just changed the system name, re-added it to the domain and I was good to go. Now I need to find an unattended way to add username, system, etc. and I'll be really happy. I've seen some methods on these forums and I'm sure I'll figure it out. Lots of talented and helpful people here!! Thanks again everyone!! Jel (1) I had to create a LOCAL user on the destination system. Create a share and grant that LOCAL user Full Control over the share. Only then was True Image able to map to the share. It won't authenticate over the domain.

Sorry I just re-read your post and it seems you are doing pretty much the same as us. Hope you get it resolved soon.

We did it a little bit different but it seems to work like a champ. Not sure if it will apply to your environment but it seems to work for ours. I'm pretty sure you can find away to integrate it within a batch process. We used the Custom Installation Wizard which is found with the Office resource kit. (orktools.exe) Check out this site for more information. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistan...1362781033.aspx You define where the .MSI file lives and then go through the prompts, customizing as you go. In the end we wrote a simple batch file for our users to run. The program then generates the .MST file based on your config options as well as what you call it. The user's PC needs access to where the .MSI file lives, either on the network or on another drive (based on where you pointed to the .MSI file in the CIW). The batch file is a single command with these parameters. setup.exe TRANSFORMS=P:\Office2003Std\office.MST /qb- You would run this from the command line from the root of where the installation files live. In our case we pointed to a network drive p:\ and the install files lived in p:\Office2003Std\office.MST We found that we can install MS Office 2003 on Dell Precision 370's running XP Pro on a Gbit network in 1 minute or less. We're still working on getting CIW to install the updates as well, but just getting this far was a big hurdle to overcome (Office 2003 rollout to 90+ users) Hope this helps. Jel

Takeshi, thanks for replying. I've checked out the links you sent and they are a good resource. _jd_, thanks for the info on Ghost 8.x. Good to know that ghost can reset SID's. I really like the idea of remote cloning of workstations as well. Looks to me that ghost and sysprep are still my best bets at this point. Now if I only had a new machine to build and test on. Our company keeps hiring people and I had to give up my last machine to the new hire. Oh well. Have a look at BootIt NG - partitioning, imaging, and boot management. Free 30 day trial or $US35 to buy. http://www.bootitng.com/ I've used it on many occasions for various partitioning procedures and image creation and restoration - and not had any problems. - <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'll check it out. Thanks for the suggestion. Always good to know about imaging software. CTG, thanks for the detailed info. Looks like we're in similar boats. I skimmed over the BFD site and started wondering if you could use a bootable CD instead of a floppy. Would be cool to try and have that as an option. The onboard network adapter that Dell uses is the Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx gigabit controller. Is it the same as what you guys are using? We are also installing secondary Intel Pro 100mbit adapters in our machines so I could probably do the install through that adapter and then convert over to the gbit card after the image has been ghosted to the machine. I'll shoot you a PM for more specifics. Cheers, Jel

Baliktad, Thanks for your reply. I appreciate the list of how things happen. Now I have a better idea as to all the steps that need to happen. I'll check out the 2 .chm files and see how much farther I get. Maraming salamat! Jel

FC, thanks for the reply. Thanks for the suggestions on Ghost. I'm not too concerned on what imaging software I'm going to use, whether its Ghost or not. I'm still a little confused as to when and where I will be using sysprep. I will be trying to "ghost" a fully installed XP Pro and Office 2003 image with all the service packs and updates. Here are the setups that I think I'm going to take. Grab new Dell PC out of the box. Go through XP Pro setup, entering my Volume License Media serial number. Install SP2 and all other updates. Install Office 2003 and all updates. "Ghost" the image and put it on a network drive or CD. From what I'm gathering, I will still need sysprep to create a new SID for any new PC's I will be setting up? It seems that sysprep will create the new SID if one were doing an unattended install of XP Pro, but my image should be installed, configured, and patched. I'm thinking that somewhere along these lines I need to give the new PC a new SID, but I don't know where and when to do that. snekul, thanks for your comments as well. Base on my added information would you still say that I'm going through correct steps? I would much rather configure a router or switch but this is what I need to get done. Cheers guys! Jel

We have 3 different software configurations for our users. All hardware is exactly the same (Dell Precision 370). The only difference is the software we install for the user based on job function. Artists get their suite of tools (3dsmax, Maya, Photoshop CS), engineers get their programming tools (Visual C++, Proview, ProDG), and admin get the very basic setup. We have a Volume license for XP Pro as well as a 100+ user license for Office 2003. I'm mostly concerned with creating a basic image for each job function. Basically XP Pro w/ SP2, Office 2003 w/ all updates. Ideally I'd like to create 3 separate images, upload them to our network drives, put the new PC's where they are going to live and then blast the specific image onto the machine. Not quite the unattended install where I'm providing things like username, system name, serial numbers for other apps, etc. Just download a working image and go from there. From what I've read on these forums, Ghost 2003 is the imaging software to use and NOT Ghost 9. I also seem to remember seeing something about sysprep but I'm not sure if that utility still applies if we have the volume license. The last time I used Ghost to create drive images was back in 2002 and this was before the unique SID's. I was mostly out of the desktop support environment as I was doing more server/network support. Now that I'm back working, after a 2.5 year layoff, I'm doing desktop support again and I'm still playing catch up. I hope I've provided enough information to go on. Still very new to these forums, but the wealth of knowledge here is invaluable. Thanks to everyone for making it such a great resource.

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Been out of the loop for awhile. I've been just one of the many unemployed sys/network admins for about 1.5 years. Finally back in the workforce and found that its probably easier, better, more efficient to register and correspond with some other IT folk as opposed to buying and digging through those expensive books. The industry changes so fast so I know I have a lot of catching up to do, but I'm hoping that a solid background in IT starting from DOS all the way up to W2K, will help me learn quicker. Oh yeah, I dabbled a bit with 3Com and Cisco network hardware so hopefully that will help me out as well. I've mostly worked in smaller sized companies (500 employees or less) dealing with all aspects of running a data center. I hope to be able to contribute as much as I learn. From what I've seen so far these forums rock and I hope to hang around for awhile.