Ghost Solution Suite

Good Day,

I am having endless issues PXE booting a Lenovo E540 machine from our Ghost Cast Server.

All the lenovo laptops we have had up until this new model have not given any problems. Our Ghostcast server is running the 3COM TFTP Server for the PXE booting option. I have changed the E540 to Legacy boot mode and it picks up the PXE boot session. It starts loading, beeps and shows the Ghost Cast interface screen prompting ERROR 546 : Output error file to the following location A:\ghosterr.txt

I have tried adding the "-afile=c:\errorfile.txt" to the commandline of the ghostcast server with no avail. If i Cancel the error message I get an "Application Error 40217 - Cannot create a file preservation Metadata at filepath "."

I assume there is a problem with the mapping of where the image is located. But what I cannot figure out is whether this is related to the E540 range of laptops in general. I have tried 3 different E540, yielding the same result. All the other models so far have not given any problems (eg. E520, E531).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Let's start with a bit more information gathering:

1. What exact version of Ghost?

2. Do you normally PXE boot into DOS or WinPE ?

3. Do you have access to a USB floppy drive you could use to capture the errror message?

4. Does your new Lenovo have a different NIC chipset to the ones you currently have which give no problem?

PXE boot is not a single step process. The system bios contains standard code which enables the machine to load and run a simple boot loader program, which in turn loads the DOS or WinPE environment. However, correct drivers are needed to take over the NIC as soon as the initial PXE process has run, and my guess is that your environment does not have the correct drivers to support this new model.

1. Version Information
===================
Lenovo E540 PCI: Realtek PXE B03 D00 (Not working...)

Lenovo E531 PCI: Realtek PXE B05 D00 (working...)

PXE Boot Menu V1.10
Symantec Ghost 11.0.2
3COM TFTP Server v2.02 Build 4

2. Boot Info:
============
We boot into the Symantec DOS interface.

3.Storage
================
I have tried booting with a USB device plugged in so that i can store the log file to it, but from the Ghost interface I cannot see the device to save to it.
When I try and modify the directory it keeps saying "Cannot Open GHOSTERR.TXT - insert diskette (434)"

I managed to take a snap of the quick error it beeps on when booting. it seems to be a driver issue, but will this be a bios update??

Thanks!

The error "Unable to control A20 line" leads me to point you at this thread:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/could-not-allocate-page-table-memory-1

Read the post by Nigel Bree, one of the former Ghost developers. There is a link to an alternative version of himem.sys which you should try in your DOS boot image.

Incidentally, you cannot use any USB device for logging Ghost errors on the A: drive - it can only be a USB floppy drive, as this is correctly identified as a floppy by the system bios and mounted as drive A.  USB flash drives and hard disks have different descriptors in the information string they return and so are treated differently. Since DOS has no USB support, you have to rely on the limited bios support here.

Ghost 11 does not come with WinPE as an alternative to DOS integrated into the Ghost Boot Wizard. The other issue with DOS is no SATA support, although many bioses still provide a compatibility mode to emulate the older PATA (IDE) interface for hard disks. Nevertheless, the CHS addressing system used by DOS does not support really large hard disks for which true LBA support is required.

Sooner or later you will need to move to WinPE to fully support modern hardware, but hopefully an update of your DOS extended memory manager as detailed above, will give you a solution for your current issue. This should also continue to work with your other models.