Ghost Solution Suite

We have a lab set up with 14 identical computers (exactly same make/model all hardware), all running XP Pro SP3 all part of a domain. The Ghost server is only responsible for Ghost and is also part of the domain.

There is one particular machine that will not restore, everytime I launch the restore process it comes up with "failed to update xml file" error. If I go to the domain server, delet this machine from active directory, then on the problem machine rejoin the domain then the restore process from ghost will work perfectly.

Any idea's why this one machine won't co-operate?

What are the contents of the task log?  And do you have a ghosterror.log file created when the task is ran and fails?

The task log just gives that error message under the virtual partition failed, then the text says "failed to update unattend.xml" I was unable to locate the ghosterror.log....

However I have a far more urgent problem now that has effectively shut our lab down. When the initial problem above was happening I thought it may be the NIC was failing on the motherboard so I put in another NIC and installed the drivers for that, then cloned the new machine so it would have drivers for the onboard NIC (in use for all other machines) and the drivers for the new NIC.

Then when I pushed that image out to the other machines all of a sudden it was dropping the drivers for the onboard NIC all together. So now when I restore an image to the client machine it all works fine, then when it reboots I get an error that the domain can't be found. I continue without joining the domain and on Windows boot up the "found new hardware" wizard starts and installs the drivers for the onboard NIC. Obviously the mini setup wizard can't join the domain because at that point it can't see the NIC. Why is this happening all of a sudden when I've never had this issue before. I've made sure the drivers are installed on the machine prior to cloning the image. I have check the correct drivers are available in the WinPE image (if they weren't I wouldn't be able to successfully clone anyway).

The Motherboards are Intel DP43TF(B) with onboard NIC Intel 82567V-2 Gigabit.

GSS 11.5 build 2165

Very lost on this one.....

 Hi Adam,

Error messages suggest that you use Visat and the images are sysrpepped. But your fist post say they are XPSP3? Are they sysprepped images?

If that's the case, do you update the drivers using sysprep? Do you make any configuration changes?

Krish

Sorry I haven't checked back for a few days, been taking care of a few urgent things.

Okay, this is where I'm at now, I've resolved the major issue so the lab is back online.

Krish, it's my understanding that Ghost uses Vista based files of some sort which is why the unattend.xml file is there, all my client machines are XP and the base image was created with sysprep.

I'm left with this one problem machine which will not restore the image without re-joining the domain. The client machine is running XP SP3, and the Ghost server is running Server 08 64 bit.

The images are taken using sysprep and the answer file is all good. I'm thinking there may be a hardware issue with the NIC on the motherboard of the problem client as all machines are identical hardware and this is the only machine having that problem.

Unless anyone has any idea's why one lonely machine would play up I think I'm left with having to rejoin the domain each time we restore that machine.

 Hi Adam,

Ghost uses Vista WinPE (WinPE 2.0) for preOS. Pretty much in every other case, it uses what ever is OS uses. So I don't see any reason for it to use an unattended.xml for XP.

For your current issue, what error message does it give in Console? We do not use Domain credentials to access the machine, but I think the domain policy (which is applied to the machine when join to the domain) makes something to work.

Krish