Ghost Solution Suite

I have a WINPE file that I use for ghost. It has ghost32.exe in the system32 folder and that gets called from the startnet.cmd file. When ghost launches the command window is minimized and not available. If I unminimize it and look at it, it just sits there with a flashing cursor until I close Ghost.

This is what it looks like:

http://imgur.com/tZE8ujG

I would love to have access to the command window while Ghost is launched.

I know the Ghost WIM that gets made by the the ghost suite wizard on the Vista platform actually did this but since I am making my own WIM's now I seem to have lost that functionality.

This is what the Ghost solution suite wizard makes for you. It works great:

http://imgur.com/xrC83iS

Can anyone please tell me how to make that command window active and available WHILE ghost is running? i know it is possible because it works fine if you build a vista based WIM using the built in utility Ghost provides.

My startnet.cmd looks like this:

wpeinit

start ghost32.exe -ib -rb

As far as I am aware, you cannot have an active command windows while a command program is running, as WinPE is a command line interface and NOT a windows environment. Certainly in all my work with the WinPE 2 release, I have not seen any option to run what would be two separate command windows at the same time.  I have not tried spawning a command window - perhaps it would be worth testing whether running ghost via cmd.exe /k ghost32.exe might offer such a solution, but one other thing you could try would be to pull out one of your former WinPE setups made from Ghost Solution Suite and check out what command line options are used.

I don't think that is the case. 

As I said the one that is built by Symantec's wizard DOES work so it cant be a Winpe limitation.

I have actually tried the /k option with several variations and that does not work.

The Wim built by Symantec is not a standard build. Not only is there nothing in the startnet.cmd file other than 'wpeinit' I can't find ghost32.exe on the WIM Anywhere. I think they hide what they are trying to do to protect their software. I really don't know.

Again ... Symantec knows how to make this work because the WIM that is built using their own wizard works perfectly. So I would love to know how they do it.

in your startnet.cmd file, you need to put this line before you do anything

start /min cmd.exe

or get rid of the min if you dont care if its minimized

this gets you another command prompt in the background you can use

'start cmd.exe' doesn't spawn an additional usable command window.

Thanks anyway.

If I recall correctly, wpeinit calls a batch file in the system32 folder of the WinPE boot image. There are certainly a number of batch files in a standard WinPE image, so it may be worth a few minutes of your time to check out your Ghost WinPE disk's batch files.

I have checked all of the batch fils in system32 and windows in my WIM and the vista WIM that symantec makes. I can;t find anything significant.

As a matter of fact the vista WIM that symantec makes only has one line inthe startnet.cmd file

wpeinit

Ghost32.exe gets launched some other way that I am unable to determine.

what version of the PE are you running?  the one built in to the ghost boot creator?

I use PE 3.0 for a nice boot CD, and the start command i posted above does work.  i use that to spawn other tasks i dont want  to wait to close out, such as VNC so i can remote into the PE session

What you are doing makes sense and will certainly work BUT you are not launching Ghost.

I am using the WIM off of the Windows 7 32bit disk as a base. From there I use Windows Deployment Workbench to add drivers. I use Imagex to mount it and add the ghost32.exe file and edit the startnet.cmd file to launch Ghost.

I believe that it is NOT working for me because Ghost is actually running. If it isn't running that I have an active command window.

Like I said the WIM that is built by the Ghost solution suite works fine.

maybe you and i are thinking of different things, or i just misunderstanding

i create my own WIM files for boot DVDs using the WAIK.  i insert ghost into them, and i insert scripts that call ghost too.  i use ghost to talk to either the DVD for files, or go out over the network.  this works in one CMD window.  in other CMD windows i can run other tools.  

my startnet.cmd looks like this:

So are you saying that one of those two cmd files has a statement to launch ghost32.exe? Can I see that if it is the case?

So you run Ghost and still have a command window available WHILE ghost is running?

just to compare (and again, i am sorry if i misunderstand what you are doing), i build my WIM like this (running from the deployment tools command prompt in the WAIK):

there are 3 scripts i use to run ghost.  the scripts do this:

ghost64 -clone,mode=restore,src=X:\Images\winpeuni.gho,dst=1 -SZEE

or 

Wow. that looks very 'Proper procedure' to be honest. I do it very differently.

I just take the base wim from the cd and open it using imagex and add the ghost file and the startnet.cmd batch file.

i assume it really doesn't matter though. I am thinking that the fix here for me is to call another batch file from the startnet.cmd file.

So I would have:

startnet.cmd

yup, that looks good.  the current window will wait for Ghost to finish out, but you will still have the other one.

I actually have all that code split across CMD files that i call in succession to build the WIM.  i have a TXT file to myself explaining what they do, what order to call, why, etc, otherwise i will forget...  I very rarely have to build them unless i get a driver that is unsupported in the Ghost PE, or (even rarer) in the PE 3.0 area.

I will try it when I get in tomorrow. Thanks!

May I just add that the WAIK tools allow you to configure a WIM file which has your choice of add-ins (such as the ability to run WMI ), so using the basic WIM off the CD gives you an environment with an unknown add-in content.  That is the reason both Terry and I prefer to roll our own, which is not actually that difficult.

I have documented my procedure here:  https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/adventures-winpe-31?om_ext_cid=biz_con_cmgr_cp_20120221_pm.

When I create a WinPE bootable USB key or USB hard disk, I include a command in wpeinit which looks for a "go.bat" file in the root of the bootable device, and runs it if found. That allows me to change the activity that occurs when WinPE starts up without having to recreate the WIM each time.

Since you can also load device drivers from the WinPE command line using DRVLOAD, it also allows you to trial new drivers before recreating the WIM, or just add them externally and load them at startup.

Thank you very much. I will try and do that as well.

Darn ... it didn't work. I still only have one command window that is minimized and unusable.

It works now. I was copying my WIM to the wrong server. Doink!

Thanks for your help guys!

no problem, glad to help!