HOW TO: Using Ghost with a Bootable CD ROM and Network access even on a Gx270

If you use a Dell Gx270 (or newer), read up on the Symantec (Norton) Ghost/Intel incompatability here: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=oplex_network&message.id=3714.

Technical Synopsis: Dell and other computer manufacturers are switching to motherboards that support the newer Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives.  To support these drives, these motherboards use newer versions of the Intel chipsets, specifically chipset version 865 and newer.  The heart of the issue is that the new chipset makes the the network card and IDE controller to share the communications interrupt.  The general release Symantec Ghost 7.5 (and Norton Ghost 2003) is sophisticated enough to no longer use Dos's Interrupt 13h to communicate to the hard drive but use the new method defined by these chipsets.  However, it is not sohpisticated enough to allow the network cards to communicate in the same fashion.  It assumes all traffic sent on the the hard drive's interrupt is from the hard drive.  So, network traffic befuddles Ghost and it locks.  You can force ghost to use Int13h using the -fni switch but there is a significant performance hit.

Bottom line:  Symantec has released an update to their Enterprise Gold level support members who call in to request it.  It is a maintenance release and only the Gold support members get the maintenence releases.  We do have an active Gold level support membership but I called anyway.  The woman on the other end was very helpful and gave me the username and password to download the instructions and patch. 

Back to the main issue for this post, I'm using BootCDs since the Gx270s made the floppy drive a $19 add-on option.  I will now use the same methods on my Gx260s since it saves around a minute of boot time.  The Gx60s are not working right with the E100b driver on the CD.  So, I'm sticking with floppies for them.

I've done this with both PC-Dos 7.1 and MS Dos 6.22.  The boot discs were a pain till I figured all this out.  Now they should be easy to maintain.  They have access both to the remainder of the CDRom access and to the network.  I have a standard boot disk (floppy) that does most of the work and then calls C:\autorun.bat (C: is the CDRom after CD boot) that contains the details for the different configurations of the Gx270s that we use.  This means I can always use the same boot.img file to make the disk bootable and I don't have to keep the bootable floppy around after the fact.  Then I can simply change the content in the root of the CD to make adjustments to my ghosting method or image used.

I split the net directory between the floppy disk and the CD-Rom so that I have room enough for the required emm386 on the floppy.  If you don't use emm386 you get a binding error when connecting to the network.  Basically the Net call runs out of memory with a SYS0006 error.  Also my current method requires a fixed IP address as the DHCP mode tries to write a log file (a:\Net\DHCP.) and that doesn't work well on a read only CD.  (Please email me if you know how to get around this or have a full parameter list for Protman.dos)

Here are my steps:

Create a PC Dos 7.1 boot disk using Ghost or a Dos 6.22 boot disk using Dells util 

Replace/Add these files:

Here's my config.sys:

DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=A:\EMM386.EXE NOEMS HIGHSCAN I=B000-B7FF
BUFFERS=10,0
FILES=25
DOS=HIGH,UMB
LASTDRIVE=Z
FCBS=4,0
STACKS=9,259
DEVICE=A:\NET\PROTMAN.DOS /I:A:\NET
rem Gx260 270
DEVICEHIGH /L:3,51264 =A:\NET\E1000.DOS
rem GX60
rem DEVICEHIGH /L:3,32880 =A:\NET\E100b.DOS
DEVICE=A:\NET\NTSTS.DOS
DEVICEHIGH /L:1,7840 =A:\NET\DLSHELP.SYS
DEVICE=NEC_IDE.SYS /D:CD1

Here's my autoexec.bat:

@ECHO OFF
LH /L:2,44352 MSCDEX.EXE /V /D:CD1 /M:15 /L:C /K /E
SET PATH=C:\NET\;a:\;%PATH%;C:\
SET TEMP=A:\
SET TCPHELP=C:\NET
SET ETCDIR=C:\NET
REM \MOUSE.COM

LH /L:0;2,24592;3,272;1,68400 /S C:\NET\NET START
C:\NET\NET.EXE USE N: \\MyServer\N
if not Exist N:\ServerTools\Command.com goto NetError
SET PATH=%PATH%;N:\ServerTools

if not Exist c:\Autorun.bat Goto CDError
call c:\Autorun.bat
Goto :End

:NetError
Echo Could not map the network Drive. Did you attach the network cable and use the right disk?
Goto :End

:CDError
Echo AutoRun.Bat does not exist in the root of the CD or the CD was not recognized.  Nothing more to do.
Goto :End

:End

The net directory on the floppy contains only these files:

PROTOCOL.INI
e1000.dos
PROTMAN.EXE
PROTMAN.DOS
NTSTS.DOS
DLSHELP.SYS
E100B.DOS

Using Easy CD Creator (or nero etc) create a bootable CD image from that floppy.  Then add the following to that CD.

In the root, put an Autorun.bat that maps drives and does whatever fancy Ghost calls you want.

The net directory burned onto the root of the CD should contain:

NETWORK.INI
NETXP.MSG
NETH.MSG
NET.MSG
NET.EXE
CMDS16.EXE

Burn the CD and go!

That should get you up and running.  I'll leave it up to you to find all the right files for the hardware you order on your systems.  But this should be enough to get you going.  As you can see I used Nec_IDE.Sys in config.sys downloaded from the NEC support site but now that the memory is available I think the normal OakCDRom.sys supplied with Ghost will work fine.

Enjoy!