Ghost Solution Suite

Good afternoon,

I am a somewhat new users of Ghost Solution Suite 2.5.1. 

I am managing several labs of Windows 7 PCs and we purchages Ghost to help us with that.

I have figured out how to run the console, and how to install the client, and how to make images and how to write images out.

Yesterday and today was the first time I put my learning into widespread practise by cloning two 24-seat classrooms.   Yesterday I cloned one classroom, and today I cloned the other.  (as in, I ran a task from the server that reinstalled the systems from an image that I had saved a few days ago from our master system.)

Today, I was checking over the second room when I realized that as each machine was logged in, it was popping up a message about activating windows... until about halfway the lab when every message was about how Windows could NOT activate.  When I check the errors it tells me that our Volume license has exceeded the maximum number of activations.

What in the hey is going on here.  Why are these machines re-activating???  Each and every one of these PCs had a copy of Windows7 installed and activated with our dept Volume license.   What is Ghost doing?   Is there some configuration on the server I missed?   I have tried googling for a solution and the most recent discussion I found is this one from 2010:  https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/windows-activation-question

Unfortunately that discussion is locked so I can't add onto it.  However, it is also contains a dead link to a Microsoft document that supposedly relates to re-imaging and volume licenses.

Please, any help would be greatly appreciated.  I have found the learning curve on Ghost to be very steep, and the Ghost Implentation Guide is huge and difficult to follow.

Thank-you.

A.M.

Are you deploying a sysprepped image?  Are you using a KMS server or a volume MAK key?

The issue is not really anything to do with Ghost but a feature of Windows 7 that is intended to avoid piracy.

If you are deploying a non-sysprepped image created on a different machine then Windows 7 will detect that it is running on different hardware and will need to re-activate windows. A different bios serial number is sufficient to indicate different hardware.

Depending on how you are reimaging your machines it may be simpler to use a KMS server as this will serve out licenses to your machines on demand.

I see in your post you put "dept Volume license".  Is that a MAK key, or KMS?  Also, are you sysprepping at all?  If you are, do you have the key in the XML and are you generalizing?

It is an MAK key.   We don't have a KMS server.

No I'm not sysprepping.   I saw some mention of that in the manual, got lost, and went with defaults.

If you could point out where this is explained, I would be very appreciative.  I find the included "Ghost Implementation Guide" to be dense, enormous, and often impenetrable.  What I really need is a short "recipe" type of manual.   I have a series of 4 labs, and I want to know how to image them with identical system images.

When I created an image I:  

1. tick the box to remove it from the domain
2. tick the box to "clone using volume snapshot"
3. Have  a PC selected as the master
4. Don't have anything ticked on the "sysprep" page

When I wrote out the image I:

1. Had to set the PreOS to "PCDOS" since I could NOT get WinPE to work at all
2. tick the box for "Clone" and "Configuration"
3. Set the network for multicast (so I can do a whole lab at once)
4. Under the "Configuration" tab tick the box for "Default" (use previous machine configuration)

You mention that this is a Win7 issue, but I don't quite get that...  If Ghost can figure out how to keep the  network settings and computer name of the machine that it is imaging onto, why can't it just also keep the already-registered license of the machine?  

Oh well,  thanks for your help, and any more help you can provide would be wonderful.  As it is we're going to have to try to get another MAK key, since there doesn't seem to be anyway to "un-register" machines once they've registered, in order to free up instances of the license.   Sigh.  I hate Windows.

you need to go download the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK).  It comes with a number of help files that will spell out the process.  It is VERY useful, and free!

Sysprep is built into Windows 7, so you dont really have to "get" it, but you will have to learn to use it.  The biggest part is building the unattend.xml file through the WAIK.  While you are at this, get familiar with the WinPE.  It is part of the WAIK, and the Windows 7 WAIK includes WinPE 3.0.  GSS uses WinPE 2.0.

For the GSS WAIK, use the Boot Image creator and it will do all the work for you

As for the license, Microsoft has Windows 7 set up to strip licensing if the hardware changes (even the SN).  This is taken care of with the Rearm functionality in the sysprep.

Also, there is a way to unregister a machine with an MAK key!  you just put in the key that tells it to go search for a KMS server (it doesnt matter if you dont have one).  This key will remove the MAK from the machine, and set it up for licensing again, even if you are going to just put in another MAK!  Though i dont know if that will free up the license count or not