Ghost Solution Suite

Booting a single machine thats on the same subnet as the ghost servers can take way to long for it to pull the wim file and boot into winPE.  It can take ~45min to an hour.  I am not using multicast.  I've tried this link, https://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/double-your-pxe-boot-speed   without much improvement.  I'm curious if that article is still applicable considering its age? 

From the FAQ page for ghost 3.x you see the below post.  Is this something thats been or going to be addressed and i've just not been able to find the document for it? (I clearly dont get a 10sec transfer)

Q: Will you be improving the TFTP process so it can be tuned for faster transfers?  I use a separate TFTP server and can download a wim file in under 10 seconds.  The MTFTP with GSS3.0 is very slow.
A: We have this in our backlog to be addressed, we know it's slow and are looking to improve things. 

I've also seen the recomendation to  *Launch PXE configuration tool, select the Multicast tab, change the MTU size from 768 to 1456.  CLick save wait for the saving process and try a PXE boot of WinPe.*  Is this only if you are using multicast?  if so it's not applicable to my environment.

The other option ive seen is to update the WinPE with an updated NIC...Here's where i havent been able to try it out for a lack of understanding.  Do i need to find the latest NIC Driver for the end device i'm imaging (ie go to HP and pull the latest NIC drvier for the model) or some specific WinPE driver?  Is the process for this as follows:

1. Open the PXE config and selecting the WinPE-edit option
2. Select 'edit boot image', which pops up the boot disk creator window
3. Select '<<edit'
4. Select 'next' (it'll load the WIM File) 
5. Select 'Have disk'
6. Select 'browse' to the driver you downloaded?
7. then the next next to reseal the wim file?

Wew sorry if this is a mouthful, this topic always seem to trip me, and apparently alot of others, up.

thanks,

slade

The NIC driver you need is dictated by the version of WinPE you are using. If using WinPE 10 you will need Windows 10 drivers. Basically, WinPE is a cut down version of the operating system it is supporting - no GUI, just a command line interface. When you download the ADK for a specific version of Windows, the version of WinPE supplied with the ADK will be the same as the version of the full operating system.  Also, if using WinPE 32 bit, then you need 32 bit drivers and for 64 bit WinPE you need 64 bit drivers.  The drivers need to comprise a SYS CAT and INF file at the minimum and the drivers can be loaded from the WinPE command line using the DRVLOAD utility with the path and filename of the drivers' INF file as the argument. Search Connect on "DRVLOAD" for more detailed explanations.

You can integrate additional drivers when building the boot image, but if you are stuck then I would really recommend you read some of the WinPE documentation that comes with the ADK download, as engineers usually assume some basic knowledge of third party software when writing their manuals, and they can't just lift pages out of the Microsoft docs as they will get their wrists slapped.

EdT,

Thanks for the response. Bear with me here.  So if I'm having slowness on a HP workstation that has the followig:

1.RealTek NIC

2. Target OS is Windows 7 x86

3. Using WinPE5x

Then when i go to HP's site for drivers i need the Windows 8 x86 drivers (since im using WinPE5) for the RealTek NIC and use that driver to inject into my WinPE and not the windows 7x86 driver set.  Hope I'm following you correctly. 

(So what happens when the manufacturer doesnt have drivers for that OS version?  i.e. this model of hardware doesnt have a windows 8 x86 driver list.

So it looks like drvload allows me to 'on the spot' add a driver to test. So my existing driver set works, just slowly, so how does using drvload assist me if I'm already able to communicate on the network? 
Thanks again,

Slade,

You would need the realtek NIC driver for WinPE5 (Windows 8.1) 32-bit or 64-bit depending on what type of boot configuration you have. Please see the below two articles on locating network drivers and uploading them to PXE.

Locating the correct network drivers for your client PC on Ghost Solution Suite 
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO124400.html

How To Add Drivers To Ghost Solution Suite
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO124704.html

drvload is helpful because this allows you to load the driver on the fly without having to upload/rebuild PXE

Brycen,

Excellent info. Thaks for posting. 

...I dont see a mark as answered but both edt and brycen were spot on...

You should see it next to each post, you can mark multiple posts as a solution.

From experience, there are commonly several versions of drivers produced for NIC chipsets, and some work better than others when loaded in WinPE. Thus DRVLOAD allows you to test different driver downloads without having to keep rebuilding your boot media each time.  Intel's 82579 chipset was a real PITA as it required almost magical skills to locate the driver that worked under WinPE.

Bear in mind also that driver INF files don't always default to the highest performance NIC setting, so performance could be impacted if the NIC comes up at 10Mbps instead of 100Mbps or 1000Mbps, and half duplex instead of full duplex. It's sometimes worth a peak in the INF file with a text editor to see if a default communications protocol is set, as you can then edit it to the higher value if the default is a slow setting.  Some NIC status lights change colour according to the speed the card is running at, so making it easier to spot whether this is the underlying problem.

Finally, if you cannot find a set of drivers for Win 8.x, try a Win 7 driver first, then try a Win 10 driver. Sometimes a windows server 2008 or 2012 driver may work but they tend to be 64 bit only. Microsoft need to have a degree of backward compatibility in their drivers otherwise an O/S update would not be able to support older hardware, but of course it won't generally extend past one O/S version. 

However, it is pretty straightforward to update your boot image build environment to use WinPE 10 and then you can use the latest drivers.