OT: (very) Norton Ghost - Windoze

Martyn,

We just did this at work, will ask techy bird and get back 2morrow ;-)

Neil

(class 2b)

It can be done, but IIRC you need Sysprep, a tool distributed with packs of three OEM software. You simply shut down the machine with sysprep once you have installed all the drivers. Copy drive image, on bootup it runs Win setup and asks for product key etc.

Vernon

What version of Ghost are you using? Only 2003 supports booting from DVD See

for more info (a link toSymantec's site)

Use Sysprep. it can be found on the Windows 2000 Server CD under Tools and support. But there is a newer version (1.1) which works a lot better than the one on the CD. We found that sometimes when running Sysprep the machine would hang when shutting down, and as a result the NTFS cache wasn't flushed properly and Ghost would create the image.

Take a look at

formore info on Sysprep.

I can help you with everything exept the bootable DVD bit, since i just make coasters when i try this!. I do all my machines at work using ghost, but i use network boot disks and pull it off a server - much easier!

Are your laptops in a domain, or are they just stanalones/workgroup members? and are you using one of the versions of windows that needs activating (hence the need for a seperate serial number?), or the much easier corporate version?

Do you actually _need_ to change the serial number? It would be much easier if you left it alone. If you machines are non-domain ones, just ghost the image back onto the other laptops, and then you can boot them up and rename them, or use the 'ghostwalk' program that comes with ghost to rename them from a dos prompt (so straight after ghosting them)

If your machines are domain members, it gets more complicated as windows machines have a 'SID' which is supposed to be a unique ID that every domain member has. This is automatically generated when you join them into the domain, so the easiest way to get round this is to make your ghost master image not a domain member and join the other laptops into the domain when you first boot them.

If you do really need to change the serial number there is a utility called sysprep that comes on the windows 2k/xp CDs. look for deploy.cab on the CD and extract its contents. there are some crappy instructions with it, and more if you search about on the web.

sysprep lets you re-trigger parts of the setup process on an already installed machine - so you can set up your master laptop. run sysprep on it, and next boot it will reprompt you for all the serial numbers and everything that you will have put in the first time. (new pre-installed windoze machines often do this when you first turn them on) If you set up your master laptop. run sysprep. shut it down, and then image it off you will get all the other laptops to run the setup when they first boot - which sounds like what you want.

You can also use sysprep to make one image go onto different hardware, and make all the renaming bit automated. If you want to start doing that then Ive spent the last couple of years perfecting the process, so just ask :)

You can boot off the CD that ghost 2003 comes on, and run ghost from the CD. Ive had no luck making bootable CD's containing my images, but if you split your image into suitable sized chunks, you can just write it onto non-bootable cds, then boot off your original ghost cd, and feed it the data cds when appropriate.

I actually spent a fair amount of today making new images (ones that actually windows update properly) and sysprepping them. Ive not seen it hang while shutting down yet. Its hung a fair bit while booting back up....

It's not fool proof though. I recently made a 2K image on a modern Dell,

2.8Ghz P4 and tried to use this on an old 850Mhz P3. The ghosting of the image works but on reboot the install just hangs.

Is this a different HAL thing? Both PC's were ACPI compliant, well the older says it is!

When you install the older one in the normal way (so as a standalone windows install) does it actually use the same HAL as the newer one?. There are actually a few different types of ACPI HALs, and they dont all work both ways (called something like 'ACPI uniprocessor PC' and 'ACPI PC' and varioations on that). Some will work on other PC's, some wont.

Check which HAL its using by looking in the computer section in device manager. Should say exactly the same thing. You can change it from here to test it too.

If you set the HAL to be 'standard PC' it'll work on any of them. You loose the ACPI stuff though, so it probably wont automatically shut the power off when you shut down. I put up with this for the ease of imaging (some of my old PC's are non-acpi too).

Theres also the problem of different IDE drivers. You can specify different ide drivers in the sysprep.inf file so that when it boots up it can actually load windows properly. You may have to do this to get it to boot up on different hardware.

I've got the same image working on about 20 or so differnt types of PC (ranging from old P2-333's to new P4's)

Thanks Tom, I'll look into it a bit deeper. I suppose it's stuff I could have found if I RTFM'd a bit more :-). I only read just enough to try it out quickly.

Thanks.

In the writings of Mother, the scrolls contained these prophetic words:

As stated, use SysPrep...

Also when making a new Windoze CD you will want to make it bootable:

I know it's about slipstreaming (which is always an good idea for Windoze disks) but there is a part about making a boot CD...

You ask some cracking IT questions ;o) Oh and when doing 'test' disks use a DVD/CD-RW saves on coasters :o) Took me 5 attempts to get a system to work with a similar setup...