Ghost Solution Suite

I know this question is not as much a Ghost question but a Sysprep question but I know there is a lot of experience on this board and I am hoping to get a quick answer.

I have a Ghost image created off of a Dual XEON processor workstation with an Adaptec SCSI controller in it. It is of course using the Multiprocessor HAL. I ran Sysprep on this image and used the BuildMassStorage=Yes option.

Now I have a slightly older model of the same workstation that I need to apply the image to but this model uses an LSI SCSI controller. I used Ghost explorer to edit the Sysprep.inf file and added a line under MassStorage with the device id=path to the inf and copied the inf and other LSI driver files into that said path. I did NOT re-sysprep the image since I was able to make the changes through Ghost explorer.

I then applied the image to the workstation and I immediately get a blue screen and reboot as soon as windows starts to boot. The blue screen is so quick I cant read the error but I ASSUME that it is the mass storage controller driver causing the problem since both machines use the same HAL.

My main questions are 1. Should I be able to make the changes using Ghost explorer or do I need to re-sysprep it with the added driver?

2. Are there any other changes besides the device id and driver path in the MssStorage section along with the driver in the correct path? I am not in the office now but I will post the exact syntax of the added device line if needed.

Thanks in advance!

Hi Chris,

You can use Ghost Explorer to modify Ghost image and make changes to sysprep answer file. However when you created a sysprep'd image, have you included -pnp switch? If the switch has not been used, the mini-setup wizard will not perform a full enumeration of all devices.

On XP platform, if a driver is unsigned, the "DriverSigningPolicy" setting needs to be set to "Ignore" in the Sysprep.inf file under section. Otherwise the mini-setup will pop up an warning message to state the driver is not digitally signed.

Best regards,
Jenny

Thanks for the reply Jenny,

I am not using the -pnp switch when I sysprep but I did not think it would apply to the MassStorage drivers, or at least I have never needed it for any of my non scsi storage drivers. I can try it though.

I am using the "Ignore" setting for DriverSigning.

Hi Chris,

The -pnp switch is a powerful switch, it will reinstall mass storage drivers during mini-setup. So you can restore an imaged which is created from scsi driver to an IDE machine, as long as their HAL are the same. It is recommended that using an "older" machine to create sysprep'd image, and deploy it to a same or newer machine.

When using -pnp switch, the answer file needs to include mass storage drivers that are needed when deploy to different machines. To get Windows XP standard mass storage drivers, you can run c:\sysprep\sysprep -bmsd from a clean XP machine. And the answer file needs to have section pre-defined. Let me know if you have any question.

Jenny

Some good points there Jenny, we have been using that method successfully for quite a while but...

If we take a ghost of a machine with the sysprep files and then some time later want to take a second image with updated software or whatever - the MassDriver stuff never works and we are back to the old BSOD problems with different hardware :(

It always happens that the "second" sysprep image isn't captured properly. Any idea why this could be? The initial sysprep must be leave some kind of configuration changes on the OS that break the nex one.