Ghost Solution Suite

When I clone a computer and specify a computer name in the Symantec Ghost Console the clone stage is a success in the event log but the next stage says "To target operating system" failed. On the client machine it comes up with the sysprep wizard even though the answer file answers every questions except for the computer name which I specified in the console. Please help.

Thanks
Ricky

Hi Ricky,

What OS do you deploy? Have you tried to use the sysprep answer file and successfully reboot a machine from a sysprep reboot? Where does the sysprep wizard stop, at the page where it is requiring for a machine name or at the beginning?

Regards,
Jenny

Hi Jenny,

We are using Ghost Solution Suite 2, and are trying to roll out XP SP2 images. The sysprep wizard stops at the beginning and then in the Gjost Console it says that it isnt connected anymore.

The sysprep answer files answers all of the questions except for the machine name which I left blank, but under the default configuration parameters I ticked Apply Computer name, yet this obviously has not worked. Any ideas?

Thanks
Ricky

Never mind...Message was edited by:
Nico Berlee

Hi Ricky,

The task fails is because the client machine doesn't boot back to the Windows properly (actually hanging in the Windows mini setup wizard) after cloned a sysprep'd image. Therefore the client machine is not able to connect to the Console. During a task between each step, if the Console does't get a response from the client within a specified time, it will fail the task. The waiting time can be modified in the Console via menu Tools -> Options -> server timeout.

Now we need to find out why the client machine will pop up the Windows mini setup wizard instead of go through it automatically. Does the answer file works properly without using cloning task?

Can you please clarify below two items first?

1. On the client machine in the Windows mini setup wizard click "Next" to move on to the pages that require user inputs and see whether the answer file settings get picked up and displayed in the screen, e.g. a product key that is defined in the answer file gets displayed on the product key screen. If the answer file is correct, this should work. In this case you possibly missed to turn off oemskipeual or oemskipwelcome in the answer file.

2. Run sysprep on the client machine and select "shutdown mode" = "reboot" to see whether the Windows mini setup wizard will run automatically after the sysprep reboot. This could help to isolate the problem between sysprep and Ghost task.

Cheers,
Jenny

Thanks Jenny

1. It comes up with the welcome wizard and then I press next and it asks me to type in a computer name. I left this blank because I wanted Symantec Ghost Console to fill this in for me.

2. Here is my sysprep answer file:
;SetupMgrTag

InstallFilesPath=C:\sysprep\i386
OemSkipEula=Yes
TargetPath=\WINDOWS


AdminPassword=<encrypted password removed - Krish>
EncryptedAdminPassword=Yes
OEMSkipRegional=1
TimeZone=85
OemSkipWelcome=1


ProductKey=<Product key removed - Krish>
FullName="KSHS"
OrgName="King Solomon High School"
ComputerName=*


Xresolution=1024
YResolution=768
BitsPerPel=4
Vrefresh=60


CountryCode=44
Dialing=Tone
AreaCode=020


LanguageGroup=1
SystemLocale=00000809
UserLocale=00000809
InputLocale=0409:00000409


DistFolder=C:\sysprep\i386
DistShare=windist


JoinDomain=kingsolomons.local
DomainAdmin=administrator
DomainAdminPassword=*****


InstallDefaultComponents=Yes


BrandIEUsingUnattended=Yes


Proxy_Enable=0
Use_Same_Proxy=0Message was edited by:
Krish

Hi Ricky,

Thanks for posting your answer file.

The answer file works perfect in my lab's machines, both using console tasks (create sysprep image, then restore the image with configuration step) and just run sysprep on a XPsp2 machine and it goes through mini-setup wizard automatically.

Can you check two things?

Do you set ComputerName=* or you leave it as blank ComputerName=? Because your post said "it asks me to type in a computer name". If it is blank, the mini-setp will stop and ask for a machine name. If * is used, it will generate a random name which will help mini-setup go through smoothly. The computer name can be changed in a configuration step.

How do you create the sysprep'd image (use console task or run sysprep.exe from the client machine), and which switches do you use? If you use image create task, you can see what switches are included by selecting the task -> right click -> select Task Scenario.

Suggestions to the answer file:
1. set BitsPerPel=32 and Vrefresh=72, so the screen can have a better color quality.

2. It is not necessary to enable EncryedAdminPass. Because on the client machine, the entire sysprep folder will be deleted after sysprep reboot. If you have modified the .inf file, the encryed password will be saved as text. During sysprep reboot, then the mini-setup wizard will stop, pop up an error message and tell you to reenter a password when first logging to Windows. You may like to store the image in a secure place as the sysprep.inf is visible under Ghost Explorer.

Cheers,
Jenny

Hi Jenny,

I have finally managed to successfully image a pc but the pc does not inherit the name from what I specified in the GSS. I have used ComputerName=* in my sysprep answer file but when the computer goes through sysprep it just creates a random name. I want it to inherit the name from default configuration parameters page in the computer properties in GSS.

I took of the encrypted password and this made sysprep work by the way.

Thanks
Ricky

Anyone?

i'll give this post a bump because I'm having the same problem except i'm trying to get it added into AD.

Although I do have luck when deploying a clone and configuration task with an image without sysprep. After the ghostcasting process is done, it boots straight into windows where the login screen is and then it reboots itself 10 secs. later because it's trying to rename the computer and add it to the domain automatically.

Sysprep screw me somewhere and I can figure it out. Jenny did mention to set the # of secs. to allow the console to connect to the client because it wasn't expecting that the mini setup to run. So the client will eventually time out will the mini-setup is doing its magic.

another thing i'm wondering is that, does the ghost client need to be installed on the sysprep image so that once the computer leaves the mini-setup and reboots into windows, the ghost console will automatically update the client and the task log?

Anybody have any ideas...?

> does the ghost client need to be installed on the sysprep image so that once the computer leaves the mini-setup and reboots into windows, the ghost console will automatically update the client and the task log?

Sorry for missing this question - I wasn't following this particular thread - but that's exactly what the way we expect things to work. Now, one of the things we could perhaps do in a future edition of GSS is provide a way to have the client automatically installed into an image that we restore if the reconfiguration code detects that you've restored an image without it.

I can't answer any other questions about Sysprep - unfortunately, the rest of the system keeps me too busy to learn much about that - but thanks to Ricky for bumping this unanswered one back to the front.

Thanks Nigel, but am I correct in assuming that if under the default configuration parameters I ticked Apply Computer name, then when the computer runs through sysprp, it wont inherit the computer name from GSS?

One of the things that changed in GSS2 is that we now try and edit the sysprep.inf (or sysprep.xml) file to stop Sysprep undoing all the configuration changes we make, and so it should be that the ComputerName setting in the INF file is being updated to match the one the console wants to set.

Checking this is hard, because sysprep helpfully erases the INF file after it runs. To see the final resulting INF from this, you have to get a copy of the file after the GhConfig.exe tool has (in the DOS world) edited the INF file, but before the system has rebooted to Windows and removed it.

You can do this by adding a "Command Execution" step to the task, and ask to run it in the boot partition. If you ask to run "C:\command.com", you'll get a command line where you can experiment with running tools like omnifs.

Omnifs lets you do all kinds of things to the Windows system; to get familiar with what it can you you can play around with the Windows version - omnifs32 - which will be on your console machine. You should be able to, from the DOS prompt, do something like
C:\Ghost>omnifs copy 1.1:\sysprep\sysprep.inf 1.1:\sysprep.test
to copy the edited sysprep.inf file to somewhere else on the target OS, so that after you reboot into windows you can open it up and take a look at what the results are.

While you're in DOS, you should also be able to find the settings file that GhConfig was trying to apply. It's in a file called GHREGUPD.REG, and it's just a text file with settings. You can use omnifs to save a copy of that too if you want too, to see that the right settings that you expect are in there, then look at the final INF to see how it was edited.

Thanks Nigel but you misunderstand what I am asking. If we have a classroom of computers names it-01, it-02, it-3 etc etc, and we roll out the remo agent to all of these computers then what we want to do is to send out an image and when the computers restart they will inherit the old computer name from the box ticked "apply computer name" under the default configuration parameters.

We wan tto do above, but it doesnt work. Any ideas?

I've been having a think about this, and I suspect it's the result of the console UI not being set up in a way that properly explains what settings it uses for what purpose.

Every machine in the console has a set of configuration settings recorded for it - in the console, this are the "default configuration", and after you've applied a task to a machine and the task has the "Refresh configuration" tickbox set, at the end of the task it will ask the machine for its current settings and record those as the default.

When you create a task, there is a matching tickbox called "Use default settings". When you have a "Configuration" task step, any specific configuration settings you specify for the task take precedence over the saved defaults. Then, for every setting you didn't override in the task, if the "Use default settings" tickbox is ticked, it picks up the last-saved default setting for the individual machine and tries to reapply that.

Basically, as long as the console has the right machine name stored in the "default configuration", you can use this system to get the name reapplied.

Now, something that may help to make sense of the above explanation is that if you right-click on a task, there is a context menu option called "task scenario". This provides a single document that describes everything the console thinks is going to happen, and includes a list of every configuration setting for every machine that it plans to apply.

If you have a task that isn't giving the results you want, it's a good idea to get that task scenario and perhaps think about posting parts of it here, so we can look at it and perhaps explain why it has made that decision.

Here is my task scenario as requested.
The computer recieves the image successfully but when it restarts and runs sysprep, it generates a random computer name instead of the one that I ticked in "apple computer name"

Task : Clone\silver

Task steps :
Clone
SID change

Number of client machines: 1

Machine names:
Black

Network Information:
Data transfer mode: Unicast
Data throughput limit: 200 MB/min

Clone

Image definition: Images\Dell V2
Image file location: \\Cl2ksrv01\d$\Images\Dell V2 020207.gho

Target drive: 1

Image info:
1 - NTFS - 76285.2 - 27626.1
Image file preserved: No
Files and directories preserved: 0

Looking at the task scenario, you haven't told it to apply any configuration at all - not even to reapply the default one.

In the task properties, on the "General" tab, there are several tickboxes that control all the additional things you can do in a task, and as you tick them additional pages become available that let you control the details of that kind of operation.

If you tick the "Configuration" tickbox, a "Configuration" tab appears in the task properties dialog, and that tab lets you control all the various ways tasks can reconfigure machines.

By default, the action selected in the "Configuration" tab is "Default", to reapply the saved default settings (the ones you can view in the machine property pages).

So, if you select the "Configuration" tickbox and save the task, then view the task scenario, it should explain that it will reconfigure the machine name. Try that, and see how the task scenario changes.