Ghost Solution Suite

Hi,

I think you are running Ghost using a CD or a boot disk. Most likely issue is a wrong network driver. One of the first things Ghost try to do with the network is to acquire DHCP address.

Did you check if the DOS driver is correct for the machine, or if there is an update available?

Krish

Hi,

Did you managed to clone this successfully before?

It is difficult to rule out a possible hardware incompatibility here, since 7.5 is almost 6 years old now. However, since it is certainly failing at network, I still suspect something to do with the driver. I have seen some of the earlier versions of BC network card not working with the recent B57.

How old is the notebook? Is it possible to try with an earlier versions of the driver, released around the same time as the machine?

Krish

Message Edited by Krish Jayaratne on 07-26-200707:15 PM

Hi Alvin,

You seem to have gone through everything already. Now I can't think of what else to be done, except trying with different options in the protocol.ini.

Before we go there, I would like to find out if anyone had successfully used this model with a any version of Ghost to rule out driver incompatibility.

Has any one managed to use Dell Latitude 630 with newest BC57.dos driver?

Krish

Like Alvin, we have pretty much the same setup and are getting the same error.  Updated driver and all.

--Josh

Hi Josh,

What version of Ghost do you use?

If it 8.2 or later, have you tried UNDI driver?

Krish

I'm having the same issue with the D630s.  We use 3COM PXE services to network boot the machines.  It gets to the Ghost menu screen, and we choose the Broadcom template since that's what in the D630 laptops.  Just after that, it gets to the part where PC DOS starts, and just hangs forever.

This exact thing has happened before when a new model DELL arrived, and all I needed to do was go to DELL's website, and download the latest NDIS2 drivers for that model, and upload it to the Broadcom.sys template in the 3COM boot editor.  Well, I already updated B57.dos with the latest download from DELL, and restarted the PXE services, but it's still hanging at the same spot.

Like Josh, I'm at Ghost version 8.0.0.94.  Thanks for any further advice.

Hi Wilson,

You may be facing a slightly different problem than the others, since it fails to boot from PXE.

Could you open the boot image using 3COm image editor, go to properties and change the settings for "KEEP BASE CODE"?

Krish

Thanks for the reply Krish.  I made the adjustment that you suggested, and here is what I'm getting now.

--------------------------------------------------------
IBM Protocol Manager Version 2.0
Broadcom Ethernet DOS NDIS Driver v10.03 (061215)
Device Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Etherenet, MAC Address xxxxxxxxxx
LineSpeed 1000Mbps, Full Duplex, IRQ - 10, Busnum - 9, Devnum - 0

NTSTS: Initialization started
NTS00`0:  There is no section in PROTOCOL.ini with DriverName equal to NTSTS$. or to NTSTSn$, n = 2, ...., 9.
NTSTS: Initialization failed.
Copyright IBM
Copyright Microsoft
No NETBEUI section found in configuration information

IBN Netbind Version 2.1

NET5741: The protocol manager was unable to bind.

For more information, type NET HELP 5741
The REQUESTER service is not started.

-----------------------------------


Thanks for any further input.

Hi Wilson,

This looks like an error in Protocol.ini. Did you edit the file?

Could you post the file if you are not sure if it is edited?

Krish

Krish, the Protocol.ini file is *exactly* the way I downloaded it from DELL's website.  Here is the content:

; Protocol.ini section for the Broadcom Ethernet NDIS2
[B57]
   DriverName = "B57$"

; BusNum from 0 to 255
;    BusNum =

; DevNum from 0 to 31
;    DevNum =

; PortNum or FuncNum from 0 to 7
;    PortNum =
;    FuncNum =

; LinSpeed can be set to 10 or 100
;    LineSpeed =

; Duplex can be set to half or full. LineSpeed is required when this keyword is used.
;    Duplex =

; NodeAddress specifies the network address used.
;    NodeAddress =


; FixCheckSumOff turns off the driver's work-around for the TCP/IP stack to recognize
; the 1's complimented version of the checksum.
; FixCheckSumOff

;AcceptAllMC informs the driver to deliver ALL Multicast packets to the upper Protocol.
;AcceptAllMC

;
; To add more adapter(up to 4) repeat the below entry, where n can be from 2 to 4.
;

;[B57_n]
;    DriverName = "B57n$"
;    BusNum =
;    DevNum =
;    PortNum =
;    FuncNum =
;    LineSpeed =
;    Duplex =
;    NodeAddress =
;    FixCheckSumOff
;    AcceptAllMC


Thanks for your help.

Krish,

One more piece of info that may help.  I made a Ghost Network Disk (2 floppies) with this same NDIS2 driver, and I can indeed connect to a Ghost server session and push/pull images without any problems.

Not sure why the same driver works on floppy disk, but hangs up when I try to use the 3COM PXE boot service...I'd obviously rather use the PXE service, because it's easier than dragging floppies around (and some of my workstations don't even have floppies anymore).

Hi Wilson,

The protocol.ini posted does contain some of the required entries. All the lines starts with semicolon are treated as comments, so it only has the driver name section.

Could you add the following sections to it?

[protman]
drivername=PROTMAN$

[pktdrv]
drivername=PKTDRV$
bindings=B57
intvec=0x60
chainvec=0x66

Then you leave the rest as it is, only important part from existing driver is,

[B57]
drivername=B57$


I just had a look at 8.0 templates. There is no BC57 template, but there is a BC44 template. It is pretty much the same except for the driver name.

One other easy way to do this is to make a copy of broadcom 44xx driver and copy bc57.dos driver to it. Then you can edit the protocol.ini to use the new driver. Only change you need to do is to change the line
drivername=B44$
to
drivername=B57$

I tried this with a Dell 745 here, which uses the same network card and seems to work fine. intvec and chainvec parameters are not too important either, since the default are the same.

I am not sure how the same driver worked with the floppy, since protocol.ini was not complete. Could you see if the protocol.ini in the floppy is exactly same as one in PXE?

There are situations where floppy works but not PXE. Some times there are memory related issues in PXE since it emulates a drive in memory or the network setup is differnet. However, I do not believe that you are experiencing anything in that area. Yes, PXE is much more convenient than floppy and we use it a lot for testing too.

Krish

Krish,

I made your suggested change to the protocol.ini, but it still is not working.  I'm getting the same error that I posted in the 11th post of this thread.

(Incidentally, the protocol.ini on the floppy was almost identical to the syntax you posted here.  When I created that Network floppy, it must have added the lines you suggested to the protocol.ini on the floppy.  I made an exact copy of that file, and put it in the broadcom.sys template on the 3COM server, but alas it still isn't working)

Thanks for the tip...I feel like I'm getting closer.  Not sure why it works on floppy, but the same driver/protocol.ini isn't working on PXE.

Chris

Hi All,

I think each of you have a different problem (and 3 different versions of Ghost) :-)

1. In case of Chris, floppy works but not PXE boot. I am now suspecting a corruption in the sys file also. I can't think of a reason for it to look for NTSTS$ driver. Would you be able to create a new .sys file using the updated driver and use it from 3Com server? In the properties of the .sys file, what are the current settings for 'Keep UNDI' and 'Keep Base' ?

2. In Alvin's case, there are no errors (I believe) when loading the drivers, but Ghost fail to get a DHCP address. Could you confirm that? Could you check if the LEDs of the NIC port are on (or flashing) to see if the driver actually initialized the network card?

3.In Jayw's case, there are no network errors but loading Ghost hangs. What version of Ghost do you use? There are differences in the way of handling other devices such as USB ports in different versions of Ghost.

Krish

We are using version 7.5 of ghost.  Can you help?

Here is a bit more info... I just attempted to load ghost from a completely stripped down DOS boot.  No drivers or programs loaded at startup.  It still hung. 

Krish,

Thanks for all of your advice.  I have to admit I don't know how to create a "fresh" .sys file.  The one that I'm working with, I copied the original broadcom.sys file to a new name, and then edited the new one to include the latest B57.dos and updated protocol.ini.  Perhaps that's part of my problem, but that editing method has worked in the past when new Broadcom NICs started arriving at the door.

How does one go about creating a fresh .sys file for the 3COM services?

Thanks again.
Chris

Hi,

Creating the 3Com file is very straight forward.

Select the 'TCP/IP Boot Image' from Ghost Boot Wizard and follow the steps - it will create a .sys file. Process is as same as creating a floppy.

Alvin, I am not sure what the reason is now. I'm begining to think that it could be a compatibility issue. However, could you try booting the machine and run Ghost after couple of miniutes if you haven't done it already? In case if the network driver is not fully initialized when Ghost starts?
One other option is trying a Static IP address - however this is a long shot since unable to get DHCP means that the network is not operational.

I can faintly remember an issue with Ghost 7.5 and Intel 865 chipsets at that time. But in that case Ghost should hang rather than complaining about DHCP.

Krish

Hi Peter,

Do you get this error (REQEUESTER NOT STARTED) only in Dell 630? Does the same image work well in other machines?

Have you tried booting 630 from a floppy disk (USB Floppy or similar)?

One of the common issue with PXE boot is not having enough DOS memory. Though the new machines may have gigs of memory, all of it may not be exposed to DOS. Since PXE uses a RAM disk, depending on size of it there may not be enough memory to load all necessary modules.

Krish