Ghost Solution Suite

We just got Ghost Solution Suite 2.0. 

We have a whole bunch of Dell computers with the Intel 82562V Integrated network adapter.  The 825 series cards should be recognized by the universal driver that comes with the suite, however it does not work.  Ive also tried the drivers from Dell and the drivers from Intel, but cant get the boot disk to recognize the network card. 

We have many other computers, some with the intel cards, and they work great.  Its just the Dell computers.  I can ghost to an image and from an image stored on a USB Hard Drive, so everything works except the network card.

We recieved Solution Suite 2.0 a week ago and I have 200 computers to ghost by next week.  I dont have time to learn and use the console right now, I just want to use the boot disk and the ghostcast server (the old method).

Anyone have any ideas that I can try to get these computers to work?

Thanks

ScHwErV

Hmm, what model would that be? A Dimension E520?

Seems like that NIC is quite an unusual beast - I've just gone looking and seen a couple of posts on the Dell forums asking for DOS drivers for this device back to last year, and various discussion of it on the Linux mailing lists.

Which Intel driver did you try? The pack at Intel's site currently lists v12.2 dated 10 July as current, but the download actually contains two drivers - one for the 10/100s and one for GigE. Did you try the E100.DOS or the E1000.DOS driver? My guess is that you'd need the latter.

I actually have the E520 and the 9200C, both have the same NIC (unfortunately).  I have about 40 of each and about a week to get them ghosted before school starts!

Anyways, I did get the Intel 12.2 driver, but since I am running the 10/100 cards and not the gig cards, I used the E100.DOS driver and not the E1000.DOS.  Ill try out the 1000 first thing Monday morning to see how that works.

Thank you

Look forward to hearing about it. The fact it's a GigE NIC chip being limited to 10/100 by the physical layer makes guessing what driver to use quite complicated. It would probably be good if you could also share the PCI IDs that Dell are using for this, in which case we could ensure that the next release we make can auto-recognise the right template to use for this NIC.

You can find the PCI identifier for a device from Windows, through the "Administrative Tools" "Computer Management" control panel applet - in the property pages for a device, the "Details" tab contains a drop-down for "Device Instance Id" which is a string like this:

PCI\VEN_11AB&DEV_4320&SUBSYS_811A1043&REV_13\4&13699180&0&6048

The hex numbers in the VEN and DEV fields of this string are the same vendor and device ID codes used in the PCI-TAG element of mcassist.cfg files in driver templates, and the console does try and match these up when deciding on the default driver selection when a machine is discovered.

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_104C&SUBSYS_01DC1028&REV_02\3&172E68DD&0&C8

However, the E1000.DOS driver did not work either.

Its a good thing CDs are cheap.  Any other suggestions?

Dang. The E1000.DOS driver is definitely the right one - Intel actually maintain the linux drivers for their chipsets at http://sourceforge.net/projects/e1000 and this specific chip is handled there. I can also see the right PCI ID in one of the internal tables of the E1000.DOS driver (although lacking the hardware I can't test it myself) so it should detect and recognise the device.

Pretty much the only other thing that comes to mind is the "plug and play OS" setting in the BIOS, which controls the PCI device initialization (when this is set to OFF, the BIOS does all the basic setup for PCI devices). I doubt that will make any difference, but it is at least worth an attempt.

Beyond that, I can only suggest you take this up with Dell and/or Intel. I can't see why the E1000.DOS driver wouldn't work since this is listed in the supported chipsets. The PCI IDs are the clincher: one of the Intel engineers explains which variant is which, and E1000 is the right kind for you.

I dont suppose "Error 33: Unable to bind" means anything?

I changed some settings in the BIOS.  The Dell computers that I have dont have a "Plug and Play OS" option, unless its very well hidden or strangely worded.  I did try a few changes, like turning on PXE for the NIC, but nothing works.

Dell tech support is worthless for this because their instructions are to only assist with putting the original OS back on the computer.  They dont support DOS.

I did not think to contact Intel directly, but Ill give that a shot.

If you have any other suggestions, I am all ears.

I was able to pull some more information in hopes it will help.

Error: PROTOCOL.INI does not have a DRIVERNAME = E1000 entry.

Failure: Driver did not load, NDIS environment invalid.

MS-DOS LAN Manager v2.1 Netbind.

IBM Netbind Version 2.1

Error: 33 Unable to bind.

I know that Ghost sometimes has a problem with multiple NIC cards, so I disabled the 1394 Adapter (basically because I am willing to try ANYTHING at this point), but that made no difference.

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Error: PROTOCOL.INI does not have a DRIVERNAME = E1000 entry.

---

OK, well we need to look at the protocol.ini - but first the question is exactly what process did you go through to use the E1000.DOS driver.

The Boot Wizard gets its templates from (on English systems anyway) a directory named something like

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Ghost\Template\

Note that trying to browse to this path is tricky, since the "Application Data" folder is hidden by Windows but putting that path into the "Run..." dialog from the Windows Start Menu will get you there. There should be an "Intel Pro 1000" directory already there, with the E1000.DOS file (which you can update by just dropping the new file in) and a suitable PROTOCOL.INI.

In the PRODOS.EXE archive that Intel provide, the PROTOCOL.INI file is not actually a valid one - what it contains is just the [nic] section from a real PROTOCOL.INI, which the ancient Microsoft installer would merge into the real one using the information in the OEMSETUP.INF file.

So, the ideal way to tell the Ghost tools about your card is to open the existing "Intel Pro 1000" driver template Ghost uses, drop the current E1000.DOS driver into there. Leave the existing PROTOCOL.INI in the template alone, it has everything it needs already.

[ Optionally, editing the MCASSIST.CFG file with the PCI ID for your particular device will help the Ghost Console process recognise the adapter and assign the driver. If you're picking the driver in the boot wizard by hand you don't need to do that, but it's generally a good thing to do. ]

Try that and see if you get further.

I had this same problem with my Dimension 9200.  There are two things you need to do in order to fix it, one: add e1000$ to the protocol.inf file where it says driver name (for some idiotic reason, the driver name is blank for the Intel pro 1000 NIC), and two, add the -fni switch to the autoexec.bat after ghost.exe.
Note: your autoexec.bat may look different since this is using an older ghost version.

Below outlines this:

Solution is to add the -fni switch to the ghost.exe line in the
autoexec.bat.
The -FNI switch forces Ghost to ignore direct IDE access and choose
another access method.

@echo off
prompt $p$g
\net\netbind.com
MOUSE.COM
cd \ghost
echo Loading..
GHOST.EXE -fni

Also remember to add the driver name to the protocol.inf, so it looks like this:

[protman]
drivername=PROTMAN$

[pktdrv]
drivername=PKTDRV$
bindings=nic
intvec=0x60
chainvec=0x66

[nic]
drivername = e1000$

One more thing:

I'm not sure if you are using the ghost console or boot disks, but if were boot disks, then you would have to make the autoexec.bat and protocol.inf changes after you create the disk.

If you are using the console, then I think you could just add the switch -fni.

I would like to hear more about this experience since I use only dells for business and I am starting to get back into the groove of using ghost.

---

the driver name is blank for the Intel pro 1000 NIC

---

What version of GSS do you have? It's definitely present and correct in the driver template in the versions I have in front of me, and checking the revision history it has been that way in the source tree since it was added to the product.

I have gss 2.0.

The Intel Pro 1000 NIC is correct with all of it's parameters, however it will not work on a Dell PC, for instance the Dimension 9200, unless you use the drivers supplied by Dell. 

So you have to import the NDIS driver for the particular Dell model you are using, then you must also add the driver name = e1000$ because it does not include this in the protocol.inf file for the Dell driver.

After 10 blank cds, I finally got a working boot disk just a bit ago, and I had to import the new NDIS drivers.  Once imported I had to specify driver name = e1000$, and then I also had to specify the parameter (switch) -fni for ghost.exe.  Then I built an bootable ISO image and tested it and it works!

I finally have my boot cd working with the above.

I tried both suggestions.  I put the new e1000.dos file in the Intel 1000 folder, then created a boot disk using the -nfi switch.  It worked!  The systems are in the lab ghosting as we speak!

Thanks a ton guys, you've saved me a LOT of work!