Ghost Solution Suite

I know this is an old hat discussion however all the solutions I have seen on the boards are not resolving my issue.

We are using Ghost Console version 11.5.1.226 to clone clients over our network. All the machines except one Windows XP computer are running their scheduled backups without issues but one keeps failing at the "to virtual partition" stage with a "client time out" error. The Console is indicating the backup is progressing through updating files on the client, updating the pre-os, changing logon settings, to target OS, creating an incremental snapshot. Then it changes logon settings and goes to "To Virtual Partition" and stops.

After reading all the posts on this matter I created a custom win-pe image with the latest and specific NIC and storage drivers for this computer. I am not getting a failure indicating missing drivers. The computer never goes to the pre-os screen after the initial restart the comptuer returns to Windows logon  and then locks up. After the backup regime fails I am unable to logon to the computer and have to hard reset the computer using the on/off button.

The computer was backing up regularly until the backup regimes were reset. The regime is running on schedule and shows in the task scheduler as successful. We have uninstalled the client several times manually and deleted all folders/register entries thinking there may be some corruption, no luck. I have tried the pc-dos version with the same failure.

What am I missing?

Thanks

Have you considered a hardware fault?

I have looked into the NIC and updated the drivers. I tried to run it again last night using the pcdos pre-os and this time it started the pull but only got to 50% before I received the following error.

***************************************************************************************************************************

Date   : Wed Sep 11 15:25:59 2013

Error Number: (502)

Message: Connection reset by server with GhostCode 19945

***************************************************************************************************************************

Again the client was at the Windows logon screen during the process and never showed the Ghost screen during the pull. It appears the application is not launching the way we normally see it.

I haven't had time to research the new error message yet. Has anyone else had this similar error?

Thanks

Recommend you enter 19945 in the forum search engine and explore the various solutions posted for this error code.

I found the motherboard NIC is flaking out - waiting for Dell service to replace. Maybe the NIC has been losing connection during the pull. I will post my findings later.

Thanks for the advice.

OK - Dell came out and installed a new mother board in the computer. We deleted all the old NIC drivers, set the onboard NIC to boot with PXE - turned off simple file sharing. Installed all the RAID & NIC drivers into the winpe image with the exact versions of the ones on the comptuer (Vista version).

The ghost routine goes all the way to launching the Pre OS but never starts the backup - "client timed out" error. 

This one computer just will not start the clone process. It was working fine until the backup schedule was changed now it won't backup.

I am completly lost at this point of what else to do. I have installed the correct NIC and RAID drivers and just can't get it to clone. Argh!

Any additional help would be appreciated.

Bruce

At this point you need to remove variables from this equation to narrow down where the problem exists.

Create a WinPE bootable USB stick with the same drivers and see if the machine will boot and if it does, check that you can map a network share, and also see the local hard disks OK.  If you have a copy of the Ghost executables on the USB stick, you could also try creating an image to the stick, if it is big enough, or to a local USB hard disk.  If the image does not provide the correct support locally, then at least you will know that the problem is most likely down to drivers. Please let us know which exact NIC chipset your machine has, because if it happens to be an Intel 82579, many of the available Vista drivers do not work correctly. However, you can search this forum on 82579 as there are past postings with links to working drivers.

What happens on the client before it times out.Does the client poll for the bound server .If so,what is the IP address with which it i trying to poll for the bound server?

Hello

Sorry it took me so long to reply. The error log shows a continual poll and reply back and forth from the Ghost server so I believe I can eliminate any network connectivety errors. We do not run firewalls on the local subnet and I cannot see anything blocking the network.

I can PING the client up to the time where the client is supposed to start the connection to the the Ghostcast Server  which is normal compared to the other computers and how they perform at that stage.

Last thing I did was to ensure the drivers for the RAID and NIC were identical on the client as the ones loaded in the pre os. The client still times out and never completes the clone proces (success with all stages up till then).

Something new this time though. The client locked up after the clone failed. When I hard booted the computer it came up to the initial stage of the Ghost process where it says the computer is busy or logon to continue. Odd.

I am not gettting any errors about drivers being needed or missing.

This is really frustrating as the client was backing up fine until the backup regime was modified. Nothing else changed and all the other computer can back fine. Argh!

Thanks for your suggestions.

Bruce.  

Check if the normal image create task works on the same machine .Also ,its worth trying the 2269 patch update,if nothing works.

Solution!

As it turns out when the client software was installed the Ghost server kept displaying an error auto-detecting the NIC. In the properties box for the client, the "client" tab was showing  "Unknown PCI Indentifiers: 3902:4335"  under the "Network Settings When Using Virtual Partition". At the same time displaying an error during backup saying a NIC driver for the client was needed.

So during configuration of the client we kept steering Ghost to use the NIC drivers for the onboard NIC using the manually selected template. The backup regime kept failing with a "client timed out" error which all the blogs/troubleshooting tips insisted was pointing to a incorrect NIC driver. (which in a wierd way was correct)

The solution was to ignore the onboard NIC manufacturer identity and drivers and use the Universal Packet Driver v2.0 - we believe this was due to Ghost being unable to correctly identify the NIC during the client software installation. This whole issue was kind of mis-leading.  When looking at the NIC drivers Ghost said it needed (during initial backup failure) the reality was that providing the exact Vista NIC driver was not necessarily the correct step in this instance.

Anyway I hope this information will help someone else in a similar situation.

Thanks to everyone who posted their help on here.

BruceB