Ghost Solution Suite

We have a corporate copy of Ghost SS 2.0 here at the office. I am trying to use this product on one of our isolated LANs, so I can't use Live Update to update the product to its newest level. I downloaded the trial version of SS 2.5 and tried imaging one of our new Dell E6500 laptops. I have tried using floppy disks, CDs and a USB stick to boot from and I encounter the same problem every time. When I boot into Ghost it just sits there with the Ghost loading screen and nothing happens for up to 20 minutes. Then all of a sudden Ghost finishes loading and I can then try to image the laptop to an external drive. however that is my second problem, Ghost never sees my external USB HD. Do I need to add a driver packet to the boot disk? The HD in the E6500 is a SATA drive, but I read many accounts that say Ghost should handle SATA drives fine all the way back to Ghost 2003, which I have also tried with no luck. Any advice, or am I missing something obvious??? I can't find any BIOS option on the E6500 that would help and I have been checking override BIOS USB control within the Ghost boot wizard.

My guess is the reason it's takeing so long to boot is because it is trying to load NIC drivers. You need to download the latest drivers from Intel (https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/intel-825xx-drivers-and-instructions-extract-them).

As far as the SATA drive I'm not sure. I image E6500 laptops all the time. The only thing I can think of is did you run the 3 live updates?

Why would it be trying to load NIC drivers? I was choosing a standard boot package, not a network boot disk.

No I did not run Live Update as this is an isolated LAN with no internet access. How do you obtain update files if you do not have access to Live Update? I read that I have to call Symantec and request them?? If so, do they just email me the executables or what?

My understanding is that WinPE (Microsoft, not Symantec) always tries to load various drivers. I suggest load the correct ones and see if it helps.

As for the live update, you could install it on another PC that has internet access and then there should be files put on the desktop if I remember right (it's been a while). Copy those files over to the other PC and run them that way.

As far as a direct download I remember this being discussed about a year ago but I don't recall the result, if you do some searching on these forums you should be able to find it.