Jump to content

Bootable Ghost CD to deploy images - GUIDE


dlevens

Recommended Posts

Could someone email there copy of a working *.ima file? I keep getting a general protection fault upon boot up and I know its something to do with one of my executables. I appreciate it. wmillen@freedomfe.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Your Ghost guide is good. But I have a few questions. I'm using NG2006 and my OS is WinXP Pro formatted as NTFS by default as well as my 2 other partitons. Needless to say Ghost cannot see my C: Drive nor any other partions I have on my system. Ex:

C: OS

F: Data

G: Ghost Images

I want to put my Ghost Images on DVD and have Ghost automatically place it back on my C: Drive while leaving my other 2 partitons intact. Is this possible under NTFS and what are the Ghost Commands to do this. I've called Symantec and they offer no answers even if you paid for it as I did. I'm new to this but I'm also prone to crashes ( A lot :( ) especially when my daughter gets ahold of my computer. I know this may be an old post but please help me if you can.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Thanks it works fine now - the ghost files were spanned and were written incorrectly for some reason.

if you have a recent motherboard with updated bios, then they usually have an option to press F8 for BBS popup. This allows you to keep your floppy as your boot #1, hdd as #2. when booting, press F8 and it will let you choose which device to boot from--choose the CD/DVD-ROM drive. when it finishes, it won't ask you to boot from CD/DVD!!

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.

Ooops, my reply was in the quote in the above post. Here is what I meant to say:

If you have a fairly recent motherboard with updated bios, then they usually have an option to press F8 for BBS popup. This allows you to keep your floppy as your boot #1, hdd as #2. When booting, press F8 and it will let you choose which device to boot from--choose the CD/DVD-ROM drive. When it finishes and computer restarts, it won't ask you to boot from CD/DVD because you haven't changed the bios settings!!

This F8 function is available for newer motherboards. I have an old computer that does not have that function.

One more thing I should add.

For Ghost 2003:

Ghost 2003 itself has CD-RW support--meaning that if you do not load CD-ROM drivers in config.sys file, then Ghost will show the CD-RW drives because of its support.... This means you can create a ghost image of your HDD and burn it directly on CD's.

HOWEVER

If you do load CD-ROM drivers from config.sys files, then ghost won't recognize your drive as a CD-RW. It will only recognize it as a CD-ROM drive.

A particularity of ghost is that if you do not load CD-ROm drivers from config.sys file and let Ghost 2003 load its internal CD-RW supports, you cannot restore images from your CD-ROM drive because Ghost recognized that the images were not burned from the program itself--but rather another program like Nero.

The reason why methods in this post work is because CD-ROM drivers are loaded from config.sys file.

Does that make sense?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
--- Regarding restoring a image from the server by Ghostcasting: ---

I hope this isnt quite off topic (any admin - please move it to a new topic if you think it should be in a new topic) but isnt there some way of doing the following:

(sorry the following sounds complex, but I sometime find it hard to put things into words hehe)

Have a boot sector on the hard drive that works like the normal XP CD boot sector (i.e. asks for user input to boot the cd) but instead, have it boot a partition on the hard drive which loads up a image of the boot disk that you could have set to automate a restore of the main partiton

i.e.

- You press a key when the hard drive asks something like

press any key to start the ghost process...

- it loads a seperate partition on the hard drive that is basically, the image (or something similar) of the floppy disk you can create in the Ghost Boot Wizard tool.

- This process (automated by params in the autoexec) will restore the primary partition which could be periodically updated i.e. new hotfixes, updated apps,etc. all installed,

I know I've sorta explained it twice hehe but its only to help you all understand what the hell i'm going on about....hopefully :)

This would cut down on the need for have cd's and floppies lying about, plus where u have many of the same system's i.e. computer suites, etc. u only really need one machine (after setting this up on each pc) to have one cd-rom drive and a floppy drive i.e. cutting hardware replacement costs :)

Best Regards (and hope someone can suggest a way of doing the above),

Nath.

Ok I know this answer is little late but I thought I would share the info anyway.

I work at a school and if we had the ability for kids to reboot and press a key for reimage etc then they would be doing it all the time to get out of lessens.

What I do here and have spent some time on is the following:

I install XP that has been played with by Nlite etc to get a custom copy with all our logos in it etc.

I create 2 partions and install xp to the first as in a regular install. When windows is up I partion the second partion as Fat32 and name it Restore as my restore partition. Once the XP install is complete and working the way I want it I run Sysyprep on it and shut it down. I then use a local ghost disk that images the xp partion to the restore partion. On the restore partion I also copy the ghost.exe and a batch file to restore the image from the restore to the main partion. (Using active Directory means the kids have no access to drive C or D when they are working and thus they cannot see any of the info contained there) Once I have the image on the D drive I then image the whole machine to the network for further distribution to new machines as they arrive etc.

In order to reimage a machine now all i have to use is a bootable floppy or Cd that boots the machine and runs the batch file on the restore partition. I can then take the disk out and walk away knowing the machine will come up finish sysprep and join the network ready for use. It means when a machine goes down it takes on average 5 mins to bring it back up completely clean.

The other benefit of doing things this way is that with admin rights and shares on the network I can access any of the D drives on any machine in the school. If I need to update and image I build the new on in the office and then i copy the restore part out accross the network to the restore on all the machines over night and then just have to insert a boot disk to get every machine to re image in 5 mins with the new working image.

Does that make sense? I know what i am trying to say and if anyone needs more info please feel free to get in touch.

Bio

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok not sure where you need more info exactly but i'll paste a couple of bits of info here and tell me if these help?

Ok on the boot disk be it floppy or cd it has the following files and content.

Autoexec.bat :

c:\

go.bat

on the restore partition it has a go.bat file that looks like this:

GHOST.EXE -QUIET -sure -clone,mode=pload,src=Restore.GHO:1,dst=1:1 -batch -RB

What you have to remember is that if you install Xp using NTFS then when you boot from a boot disk the ntfs partition is not visible to a 98 boot disk. thus you need to make sure the restore partition is Fat32 and that is why it is shown as drive c:

Obviously while testing you can run the commands manually to test the concept.

Hope this helps?

Bio

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...