Ghost Solution Suite

I am using 3COM Boot Services to boot Ghost. This has been working correctly until we received ne<nobr></nobr>w Dell Optiplex 960s. When I try to boot them via PXE, 3COM loads the menu but hangs at Transferring image file.....The TFTP logs reports that the file has timed out. I have tried using both the Universal network driver and the native Intel 8256x network driver with the same results. I have also tried each of the BIOS SATA setting AHCI, ATA, RAID and Legacy with each of the drivers with the same results. I don't see any hard drive activity when the boot image is supposed to be transferring.

Hi,
You can try changing the properties of the .sys file (3com boot image file). From boot image editor, open the image and goto properties. Then change the settings for 'Keep UNDI' and 'Keep Base' entries - they are radio buttons. 

This is the only thing I can think of, if it is some kind of a issue with releasing memory and have seen it work for some systems.

For these new machines, using WinPE/Ghost32 (or linux in 2.5) is a better option. Dos does not work very well with many of the new generation machines ...


Krish

The image will load and connect to the Ghost Console properly if I copy the files to a flash drive and boot from it. I am currently collecting the image now with this method. The problem I have with this method is the flash drive doesn't create a virtual partition for the ghost files so the flash drive must remain connected, and I don't have enough flash drives for each machine even in my smallest computer lab.

You suggested WinPE/Ghost32 but I don't have version 2.5 and cannot upgrade anytime soon. Is there any other options that can be changed for my current image to work with PXE services. Since it runs from a flash drive properly, it seems the image itself is compatible with the model's hardware. It just doesn't load from PXE.

Thanks.

 Hi,

I have seen this issue due to two reasons - first was the AHCI disks (which you have tried already) and the other is some BIOSs does not work when re-initializing the network interface. 

The difference when you use PXE rather than the USB is, in PXE it starts with the PXE network. It load the image to the clients memory and then pass the control. Once it boot to preOS, DOS in this case, it has to load and initialize the driver again. If this is causing the issue, changing the properties may help  and that's the only thing I can think of.

There was no solution to this, even with 2.5, DOS will behave the same. 


Krish

I tried changing the properties of the boot image without success; so, I'm now testing version 2.5 to see if the Windows PE environment will work.

I am using the PE boot image to connect to the Ghost Console. On my older model, everything boots properly and connects to the Console. On the 960 models, everything boots properly but it will not connect to the Console. I receive the message "172.0.0.1:1346 polling for bound server 92-113-lc". I thought this was a network driver problem, but I have added the newest network driver from Dell's website for this model and loaded it into the PE image, but this hasn't fixed the problem.

Is there a step I am missing for this to work properly?

Thanks.

 Hi,

Looks like WInPE does not have the network driver for this system. Could you try adding the driver from Ghost Boot Wizard?
If you select WInPE and select Edit, and then chose the WinPE you use and again select Edit, you will be able to add drivers to it.

Even before trying to add the driver, you can manually load the driver to WinPE and see if it is going to work. To do that, once it boot to WinPE make the driver available from a USB/CD media and use the drvload command to load it. Syntax is


drvload <path>\<inf file name>
for example, it is like 'drvload d:\drivers\vendor\network.inf


Krish

I successfully loaded the network driver from a CD with the drvload command and the machine connected to the Ghost Console, but when I added it to the WinPE boot image I still receive the same polling error. It appears that the network driver I added is not loading from the WinPE image.

I selected the WinPE-512 image and copied it, added the new network driver (the same one that loaded correctly with drvload), made sure the new driver had a check next to it, and saved it with a new name so the originial WinPE-512 wouldn't be altered. I used this WinPE image to boot the machine and still receive the message "172.0.0.1:1346 polling for bound server 92-113-lc".

How can I confirm that the driver is being added to the WinPE image correctly?

Thank you.

Hi,

Sorry for the delay in replying - did you check the driver is selected in WinPE? If you go to edit the WinPE again, you will see if the added driver is selected for the particular WInPE build. This is the most common reason.

Once boot to WinPE from that image, you can check for the .inf file in X:\windows\inf path. However, this could have being renamed but you can check for the size and then contents. If you go to X:\WIndows\System32\DriverStore\filerepository has a folder starting with the inf file name for each driver.

Krish

Sorry for this response being so long after the initial question, but I had this same issue.  It has nothing to do with your network driver.  It's the new SATA driver Dell is using.  This is why you are able to connect to your session and start it, but then locks up before it even rights anything to the disk. It needs the sata drive to know how to right to it.  The 2 ways around this (I think) are to add the SATA driver to your boot image or alter your BIOS setting to use an older HD configuration.  When I imaged this model, I created a windows PE boot  image, and added the SATA driver that way.  It was a pain (for me) but I finally got it working.  I remember for some reason not being able to do it using the PC-DOS version.  But maybe you can, I just never got it working. 

Hope this works.