Ghost Solution Suite

We are trying to place the Ghost Boot Partition on a Dell GX 150 that will then be imaged with Win2K.  We are using Ghost Suite 2.0.1.

We can use floppies to start the PC then push the image but when we restart the PC it comes up dead in the water with the message "invalid partition table".  The odd thing is that if we use an old image (pre version 2.0) to place the Ghost Boot Partition on the HD it seems work OK.

Any suggestions as to what we are doing wrong?  Thanks for your help.

Hi,

I presume that this error comes after cloning the Ghost Boot Partition, and you don't get a chance to install 2k.

When pusing the image, do you use Disk or Partition load?

When you get this error, is it possible boot the machine to DOS and run gdisk with command

a:\>Gdisk 1

and see what the outcome is?

Krish

I tried the a:\gdisk 1 command and got this results:

GDISK (W) Fixed disk 1 does not have an active partition

Next information is printed about the hard disk then there is a list of partitions as follows:

Partition: C:  1
Status: (blank)
Type:  Primary
Volume Label:  --GHOSTBOOT--
Mbytes: 15.7
System:  FAT12
Usage:  1%

What does this tell me?

I forgot to add that we tried to load the disk, not the partition

Hi,

I can't understand how this had happened, but the partition is not active. That's the reason why it is not booting.

If you run

A:\> Gdisk 1 /act /p:1

and restart the machine it will boot.

How did you create the image? Did you create it from Ghost Boot Wizard or created from an existing partition?

Krish

We created the image from the Ghost Boot Wizard then booted the machine from the Ghost client on 2 floppies.  The boot, connection the Ghost Server and puch appeared to work OK but when we went to reboot the PC we got the invalid partition message. 

BTW, your solution worked just fine.  However, after I left last Friday a coworker called Symantec Support and was told that using the Boot Partition is the "old way" of doing business and suggested using a Virtual Partition instead and suggested installing the Virtual Partition via installation of the Gost Client from the original CD.

Any thoughts about this?  Doing so would allow us to avoid a problem we are experiencing with Dell PCs, which come with a diagnostic pre-installed in a small FAT partition.  When we try to pull any image from such a PC Ghost becomes confused as which is the Windows partition.  I think the problem is the same as this:

https://forums.symantec.com/syment/board/message?board.id=109&message.id=4327&query.id=13942

However, the solution suggested there does not work for me.

Any thoughts?  Thanks for your help

Cliff

Hi Cliff,

Process you have followed is correct, so I can't understand how the Ghost Boot Partition left in-active.

Regarding the Virtual Partition, yes, it is correct in the sence that we introduced VP after boot partition. Using VP is much easier than boot partition since it is created dynamically.

Basically, if the machine is in Windows, you can install the client using remote client install (or from CD) and just run the task. It will create a temporary DOS partition and boot to it.

When you say solution did not work, was it with Ghost Boot Partition or with VP? Could you let me know the process used?

Krish

The solution to which I was referring, and which did not work for us, is this one:

I am not sure if this is a fix or a workaround.

 

I checked the "Overwrite Ghost Boot Partition" under <<image task>>Clone->Advanced options->Advanced

 

Everything worked ok after that..

This however did work:

When I hit CRTL+C to cancel out of client mode and check the partions, the machine rebooted into windows! The task that made was/is supposed to make an account in the domain. The account was made but I cannot log into it when the machine boots into windows.

Hi Cliff,

If you want to exit to DOS, use CTRL+X rather than CTRL+C. CTRL+X would exit to DOS, and you can run 'GHREBOOT' to go back to Windows.


I checked this in our systems, and the image creates by Ghost Boot Wizard is OK. Most probably your situation was caused by a previous Ghost Boot Partition present in the PC. Was there are Ghost Boot partition already in the PC? If the previous copy of boot partition worked OK, now the new one also should work.

If a Ghost Boot Partition was present in the machine at the time of imaging, and if it was not hidden (then you could access it as drive C:), delete the file MBR.BIN from C:\ before imaging the machine with another Ghost Boot Partition. If it is hidden, it should not be a problem.

If you select 'overwrite ghost boot partition' switch, it will force Ghost to remove the Ghost Boot Partition. If you are running a Console task to deploy an image with a Ghost Boot Partition, this switch should be used. Other use of this switch is to convert the machine from using Ghost Boot Partition to Virtual Partition. If the image you are deploying does not contain a Ghost Boot Partition, still this will delete the Ghost Boot Partition and continue to work with a Virtual Partition.

Does this happen at all (or many) machines you work with? What is the state of the hard disk prior to imaging it with Ghost Boot Partition? (Is it in Windows, Ghost Boot Partition etc.)

If you try installing the client using Remote Client Install and use the Virtual Partition, does it work OK?

Krish