Problem with Ghost 7.5 and new Compaq EVO's 2

[johnnymc]

We only use Compaq EVO PC's and we have a ton of apps to install on new units going into production. I purchased Symantec Ghost 7.5 to help me but the boot wizard included will not make a bootable floppy for me to use. Symantec says go to intel's site and get the new NDIS drivers. I did that and still can not get a boot floppy to work. They sent me to Compaq who told me exactly the same thing. Has anyone been able to make a boot floppy for the intel pro 100 and Compaq PC's???
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
John

 

[jeremybarker]

we're using the same thing here and i have had no problem making a boot disk. make sure when creating a ndis driver in ghost, the name you're using is the driver (in this case it would be e100b.sys) e100b$ if you dont have the $ minus the file ext, it won't work.

hth

 

[johnnymc]

Thanks for posting.

Were you able to use the Intel Pro 100 driver that came with the Ghost boot wizard? I downloaded the newest e100b I could find but still could not get it to go. Did you make any changes to the boot disk or add any drivers to the wizard?

 

[jeremybarker]

i couldnt get the intel pro driver that came w/ ghost to work. i dl the latest drivers from compaq's site

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/evodesktop/us/download/17498.html

after unpacking the .exe, start the boot disk wizard. make sure you select the NDIS option, then browse to the dos folder and select the e100b.dos (i said the .sys file earlier) make sure that you have e100b$ as the name of the driver, it should work after that. if not post back.

 

[mkennte]

Does it work? I've got the same problem and changed the e100b.dos with the newest version from compaq and intel, but the result is still the same. Boot from disk, bind the nic, start ghost.exe, blue symantec background is shown and in the middle of the screen hourglass - that's it. Is there anything else I can do?

 

[johnnymc]

mkennte,
Sounds like your problem is a little different from mine. I could get to the blue screen and then I would get the options to pick a location for the source image. Then the only options I could select where the local a: drive because my NIC was not binding. After I tried the above solutions I was able to get my boot disk to work but when I tried to make a boot disk with a mapped drive to the images I wanted to use the whole thing was too big for one disk and the boot wizard would kick out.
I finally made a regular boot disk, and once booted I would select to use a multicast session from the server and it would let me put in the server IP. Then I could go to the sever and click send the image and it would work.
Are you using Compaq EVO's ?

 

[EricPCB]

I have the same problem... when boooting from the ghost/dos disk, the NIC is not found. It works fine in WinXP.
I have tried every possible driver. A second networkcard might be an option but the onboard Intel PRO 100 VE should work.
This NICe lady from Intel is looking into it.. ;-)and i have posted it with symantec. 1000nds of compaq users can not be wrong....

 

[mkennte]

johnnymc, thanks for prompt response. Yes, we are using EVO's, N610c. I tried the following and it works, thanks for your tip.

I used a regular DOS bootdisk to set up a TCP/IP-Connection with the EVO. This worked as well as booting with Ghost Bootdisk exept starting ghost.exe and set up ghost cast session. Once the connection is build I'm able to start tasks with a command line like ghost.exe -jadrr=<IPAdresse> -jm=u -ja=<sessionname>. Paradoxically I still got only &quot;blue screen&quot; (Symantec) and hourglass if I start ghost.exe without parameters.

 

[hdavidt]

Had this same problem... found the below link

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...host&dtype=corp&svy=&prev=&miniver=symghost_7

*be sure to add E100b$ or E1000$ (depending on your card) to the driver name field in Ghost during the book disk wizard configuration

 

[JaySang]

Wow this is exactly the problem I was having! This forum is great.

I have another question about automating the ghost to automatically loading a session (i don't know where else to post this)

I can't find the proper switches to put into the autoexec to launch a specific multicast session on a specific IP. My multicast works but i want to make it automatically connect to the session. Any ideas ?

I tried the above suggestion of &quot;ghost.exe -jadrr=<IPAdresse> -jm=u -ja=<sessionname>&quot; but it gives me an error invalid switch

 

[JaySang]

My Bad! i didn't spot the spelling &quot;jadrr&quot; instead of jaddr.

Although i'm still unsure of how to use the clone switches, any suggestions ?

 

[ITToronto]

Hey you Guys have you noticed one thing about Symantec ghost is that if you use multicast IP you can only do that in the same subnet. say you have differnet subnet for different part of your office like a bigger office would have more then one Subnet. Because what i was trying to do for my compnay was to setup a Mulicast server which would be sitting in the server room and just dump the image on computers which arent working. what i found was that it would only see the ones on the same subnet.

 

[ITToronto]

and also you can't load image on to a Dynamic HD, Syamntec ghost doens't support Dynamic HD.

 

[vallan]

Replying to ITToronto and others

Is this the case. I have been trying various ways of amking the ghosting faster. It runs quite slow on our bnetwork. we have a lot of subnet but we have multicast enabled on the necessary subnets and globally.

When I put the clients and server on different subnets, the ghosting of 'dumping from client' takes over 2 hours of over 2GB Data size. When I put it in the same subnet as the Server, there is not much difference.

'Loadng to client' on the same subnet takes even longer than on different subnets.

Does anyone know why it is taking so slow?.

 

[fontys]

Hi Vallan, have you checked out the infrastructure-config?
As you allready found out, don't mc over different subnets. We have about 20 ghost7.5-servers all in their own subnet, imaging a couple of thousand clients allmost every night.
Enable the mc-protocol on the access-switches and the first router. In a 100mbits/sec network, set the ghostserver-nic to 100mbits/full duplex and the clients to automatic. If you use WOL, set the ports on the switches to static(witch will disable the first logon-security provided by the vmps!)Most common for a slow connection is a hampering connection of one of the clients, note that the slowest one sets the pace. Allways use sftp-cat5, no spaghetti! Allso remember that tcp/ip cannot(officially)go beyond 110 meters of cable.
The best thing to do is test your serverconfig and one client on a guaranteed networkconnecion and see what happens. My guess is that your infra is playing tricks on you. We reach speeds on a 100mbits/sec network up to 700mb/min, so your 2gig will take about 2.5 minutes.

 

[vallan]

Thanks

This has really become a great issue here as I am currently 'dumping from client' and it is taking 1 whole hour and more.

We are using Cisco6509 and for this one that i am ghosting, the are on the same subnet and using static IP. In this regard, we are using MSFC and multicasting.

When you say -Enable the mc-protocol on the access-switches and the first router - what do you mean?.

We have all our ports set to 100MB Full duplex at both ends and are using Cat5 cables not longer that 100m.

Despair???

 

[vallan]

Can I use a fixed multicast address and see if this will make a difference. Even using a unicast is also very slow.

 

[vallan]

What multicast version does Ghost support?

 

[hdavidt]

I always use the High Compression setting when multi casting any images..also even the machines that have static IP I always choose DHCP during Ghost boot disk creation and allow it to be resolved automatically...This has been the easiest fastest solution for us....other than that other preexisting network snafu's may present (multiple protocol's vs. just IP, 10/100 switch conflicts, etc., etc.) which may be slowing down your traffic in general...you may want to put a sniffer on the wire and see what’s being passed, how fast, etc. etc.

 

[fontys]

Your network-infra should allso be configured for mc, if you wwant to do things properly. Ghost Enterprice7.5 is using mc but if you dont install mc on your switches your clone-sessions wont be perfect. Its a job for infra-specialists, you should ask them. It only becomes apparent when cloning more than 6 clients. You allso say that your clients are set to 100mbits. I once locked a gigabit-nic on 100mbits/sec, full duplex and cloning-process didnt even reached above 5mb/min. We used to set all nics to 100mbits because of an issue with intel-nics. When on automatic they sometimes 'decided' to switch to 10mbits for no reason, wich slows your cloning-sessions down to 10mbits. Now we have a mix of 100 and 1000mbits-nics so now we allways set them to automatic detect. You suggested to try a fixed ip but when the client finds the server and the server shows the client in ghost-console why try.