Endpoint Management Community Blog

Building a Master Image with Ghost 11.0.2.1573

Jamee McDonald | 11 Mar 2009 | 0 comments

When you run Sysprep on one platform and deploy the image to another platform, you would ordinarily expect Plug-and-Play to handle any hardware differences (assuming that the machines use the same version of Ntoskrnl.exe and Hal.dll). However, mass storage drivers represent a special case. The boot loader needs to load the mass storage devices prior to initializing the operating system, so there's no opportunity to let the Plug-and-Play Manager shuffle around drivers. For this reason, it's fairly common to get a "0x0000007b bugcheck" error following the deployment of a Sysprep image to a machine from a different vendor, or different models from the same vendor, even though you're using what appears to be a generic Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) controller in both cases.

Ghost version 11.0.2.1573
Hardware: any...

Cannot Mount USB Storage Devices After Restoring an Image That Contains Deep Freeze

Jamee McDonald | 02 Dec 2008 | 0 comments

I just had a customer with an issue where after restoring an image from a machine of identical hardware, they could not get a USB storage device to install correctly. The Windows New Hardware Installation Wizard starts up but then fails to add the new device.

Software used Ghost 11.5.0.2141
Hardware Dell GX280

The issue seems to stem from the fact the customer took the image off of a machine with Deep Freeze on it. He did thaw the machine before taking the image. Deep Freeze may need the file system layout to be pretty identical to the source of the image for it to work.

As far as I can tell this more than likely is an issue within Windows to detect hardware. And with the introduction of Deep Freeze the issue may be even more compounded.

Regardless of the underlining issue, this can be...

How to Resolve Ghost Cast Error 19922

kewidogg | 10 Nov 2008 | 0 comments

There are two steps that have been proven to work when receiving this error. They may not be the only solutions, and may not work for every machine and situation. Only perform these solutions if you are sure you are using the correct NIC driver, and have exhausted most other troubleshooting techniques.

Solution 1:

* If you are able to still boot into Windows on the client machine, do so. Click Start > Run. Type "cmd" and hit enter. Type "chkdsk /f" and hit enter.

Boot into a ghost boot disk.

When ghost loads, exit ghost so that you are at a DOS prompt (in WinPE, it is in the background behind the Ghost client. In PCDOS we need to exit the ghost client and it will exit to a DOS prompt).

In the DOS prompt, type "chkdsk c: /f" where c: is your drive that you are deploying your image to...

Issue with HP 2530P Machines and Ghost Solution Suite 2.5

Randall Newnham | 03 Nov 2008 | 0 comments

I have seen a few cases with the new HP Elitebook 2530P. The default Windows PE builds do not have the latest Windows Vista driver for this and it must be updated. The driver necessary is the latest from Intel, version 13.1.2 or later. Here is a link:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results.asp...!

I posted this as a heads-up because these machines will not boot to either PC-DOS or MS-DOS with the latest DOS drivers for the network card (version 13.1.2 as well, as of this post. Versions of the NDIS2 after 13.1.2 may work, but the latest Vista driver is necessary as of this...

How to Extract Drivers from a Self-Installing Executable

kewidogg | 31 Oct 2008 | 0 comments

Sometimes you have a self-installing executable (.exe file) that may contain drivers, and want to extract them instead of installing them locally to a machine (to use with Ghost Boot Wizard, for example).

The quickest way to extract drivers from a self installing executable file, is to use a 3rd-party zip program such as Winzip, Winrar or 7Zip.

Just open the zip program, and go to File > Open or File > Open Archive and select the self-installing executable. You may need to change Files of Type to include self extracting executables.

...

When Trying to Save an Image to a CD/DVD Burner, the Device Does Not Show Up in Ghost

Jamee McDonald | 11 Mar 2009 | 3 comments

We have all seen at the end of the boot wizard, when selecting your media package, the option for 'Support for bootable cd/dvds'. This option is supposed to make it so, when it is selected you can choose your cd-burner as a destination drive for your image. What it also does, is makes the first disk of your image set; bootable.

This has been a constant frustration for me as a tech to help customer's find a resolution.

Most times, the cd-burner does not appear. Instead of messing around with GCDROM.SYS and MSCDEX.EXE. A simple way around this is to as soon as you boot up into Ghost, remove the media from the drive. Then proceed through Ghost. The cd-burner should appear as a valid destination.

I have tested the multiple times, not only for my own purposes, but also with customers. Thank you!!

1603 msiexec Failure When Doing a Remote Client Install

Jamee McDonald | 11 Mar 2009 | 3 comments

I ran across this issue the other day with a customer who was trying to do a remote client install onto one of his machines. The install failed with the error code mentioned in the title.

Usually the error code is a result of trying to install a client over the top of a previous installation of the client but that was not the case in this instance.

What I discovered was the customer had Norton Ghost installed on his target client. After uninstalling Norton Ghost, the remote client went through without a hitch.

I am not sure exactly why this would fail unless the GSS console recognizes installations of Norton Ghost as clients. Which seems to be the obvious reason. Does anyone have a suggestion? Thank you!

Rollback Corrupt WinPE

Nimi Rose | 11 Mar 2009 | 0 comments

Including WinPE as pre-os for GSS2.5 has its advantages, but if you corrupt your WinPE somehow, that configuration becomes invalid for the creation of any boot image.

To restore to your configuration as when it was initially installed, meaning no subsequent edits are retained, for both 256 & 512 versions of WinPE, please follow the steps.

From your install, sort by the size & grab the largest cab file under 'Install' & extract the file starting with boot.wim. with approx size 160MB.
Delete the wim file from <root>\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Ghost\Template\common\Winpe-512\sources
and replace the wim in <root>\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Ghost\Template\common\Winpe\sources with the...

Ghost/Altiris Issue: Unable to Use Ghost Client on a Machine Previously Imaged by Altiris

Randall Newnham | 11 Mar 2009 | 6 comments

I ran across this issue when a customer called in about it. The alterations that Altiris does to the MBR interfere with using the Ghost client on that machine afterwards.

It creates an error message: "Error 15210: NTFS signature, should not be FAT32".

What we found to resolve the issue was to reinitialize the MBR through use of GDISK or FIXMBR.

Created document number 2008091609500360: "Error 15210: NTFS signature, should not be FAT32" occurs when using Ghost on a machine that previously had an Altiris image deployed to it.

In that kb article, I attached (in the Internal Notes section) a link to a legal case between ALtiris and Symantec (when they were different entities) wherein the alteration to the MBR by Altiris is described. Altiris-side people may already be aware of this, but this was new to...

Compaq 6820S Hard Drive Issues

Randall Newnham | 11 Mar 2009 | 6 comments

Here is a heads-up on Compaq 6820S machines. Apparently, in DOS the hard drives will overheat.

I had a case today where a customer was having ghosting operations fail shortly into the process with the machine shutting down completely. He was able to replicate this on the same model of machine.

Using Windows PE based media may resolve this (please comment if you run across this), but this is essentially a hardware issue with this model of machine.

Thanks,
Randy

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