Ghost Solution Suite

Hi All,

I have ghost solution suite 8.3.

We have recently purchased a few cleint stations for which i have setup a model station.

I then started a Ghost mulitcast server to create an image of the model PC using a network boot disk.

The netwok bootdisk, loaded the network card, however, when ghost is being loaded, the task fails or hangs i.e.ghost does not start.

1) Why am i not able to carryout the ghost task?
2) I am not able to relaod the system back to windows the option return to windows does nothing?

Due to this problem, i had to reformat and start again. This time insatlled Ghost 2003, to test if there were any problems with the solution suite and boot disk.
The result is the same as above.

Additional Info

These new PCs have no PS2 connections, as i suspect that ghost is having difficulty with the usb 1.1 devices (keyboard and mouse)

However, i have other PCs on the network, that use the same keybaord and mouse and ghost works perfectly including the mouse, these pc's however has a PS2 connection which is no being used and leagcy USB in enabled in the bios.

The new PCs for which i am trying to create the iamge has no options in the BIOS to enable/diable legacy used except for the USB Controller.

Please can you help resolve this issue

Thanks

Nazmul

Hi Nazmul,

What is the model of the workstations that you are having problem with?
Have you tried running Ghost with the -nousb switch?

I am not quite sure what you mean in your 2nd question? If you are running ghost using a floppy, simply removing the floppy and rebooting your machine should get you back into windows. (Unless the windows partition has been partially restored over)

Cheers

Chris

Chris,

Thanks for your reply.

The stations are dell dimension 5150 (with One 250gb SATA

What is a "nousb switch"?

With regards to question 2, cannot start windows, i get a message,
"ghost taks failed",
I then get options to return to windows, retry, when selecting return nothing happens, it just hangs in dos.

thanks

Nazmul

> What is a "nousb switch"?

Worth asking about, because even here we get awfully confused about terms- some people talk about "Ghost Client" meaning the managed console client, whereas other people use exactly the same term to mean the classic Ghost disk cloning application.

In this case, Chris means a command-line switch, which is a UNIX-ism for a command-line option. In Unix these options begin with a hyphen character, while the DOS convention is for the same thing to begin with a forward slash character (also known as a solidus). So what Chris means is a command-line option to Ghost that disables the built-in USB driver, which is actually indicated by "/nousb".

I suspect he's asking about it because sometimes the built-in USB drivers cause the Ghost application to hang or fail, and we're not clear about why Ghost is failing for you so he's suggesting you try that option. You did say that Ghost just doesn't start and there aren't many reasons we've seen for that, and USB driver conflicts is one of them.

Speaking of ambiguous language, it's easy for us to be confused about the term "ghost task" because the Ghost managed console has a concept of "Task" which strings together a bunch of things into a scripted sequence. It's called that in the console's user interface, and it doesn't involve the use of a boot disk. That's a completely different thing to the classic GhostCast application to transfer a single image, which in classic Ghost is called a "session".

Not that we're too consistent about language ourselves; it's not quite right to call the GhostCast Server a server when it's not a service (which runs continuously in the background, and can run without user intervention) but is designed as an ordinary interactive application that does one thing and stops.

Any more information you can give us about error messages you are seeing would be welcome, in order to help us trace down where in the Ghost program things are failing for you.

Hi Nazmul,
I believe nousb switch disables Ghost's USB access code, which might help resolve your problem.
You can use it by running the following command.
ghost.exe -nousb

Are you able to describe the exact error displayed on the server and the client machine as it is a bit hard to tell where you are getting stuck at the moment.

Cheers

Chris

HI Nazmul
Sounds to me like you need the -FNI switch as your workstation is running sata drives and I've seen them hang at the boot stage.
As for getting a workstatio to reboot to windows after a failed ghost sesion so long as no part of the image has been deployed I have found that if the option to return to windows fails then CD down to the \net folder and delete the protocol.ini and the workstation should return to a windows boot after briefly showing the pcdos boot screen.

Hope this helps

Gary