Hello Rijko,

Thank you for the response. I had one more question which network drivers did you use for the 3Com 10/100 Mini PCI Ethernet adapter. Just wanted to know which drivers did you use from Bart's website to make this process running. I am deciding which one to use from the below options

e100b.cab, el99x, el90x, el556, elpc656.

I would highly appreciate any input from you and apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you

 

hi Bullshark,

it should be the el90x.dos.

No inconvenience, ask away. I like the subject.

 

 

 

hi,

nope - never seen that one before - interesting. And i have created and tested all ghosting floppies in my company.

(I integrated those on a bootable cd so my imaging buddies only need 1 cd to ghost all machines. I would like to go to PXE booting...way cool. I have it running already in a test environment, using free software called TFTPD32 which runs as a service on my server.)

Does ghosting work or does that error stop the process ? And at what point does the error occur - can it connect to the Ghostcast session ? Does ghosting start, and do all machines receive the image correctly ? Is the speed satisfactory ?

Would you mind sharing your setup ?

I guess you are using ghost multicast (W2K server ?), where you boot each client to connect to the ghostcast server and after all clients have connected succesfully you push the image ? Is imaging done on 1 location, like a helpdesk, and with the server and laptops on the same subnet ?

Are you using the wattcp.cfg file together with ghost.exe ? not always needed since ghost just falls back to default settings but i found it faster and more reliable. Mine just contains 1 line for all the ghosting being done. All laptops and desktops of all brands. It just needs to be in the same directory as ghost.exe, it's a simple text file. Create it if needed using notepad or some other text editor. Maybe you even remember "copy con" ? haha. Not many people do. :smileyvery-happy:

RECEIVE_MODE = 6

That's it.

That error, is that on the client side, server side, both ? Are you using subnets ? In that case the wattcp.cfg may need to be adjusted. Maybe the routers do not allow netbios broadcasts / UDP traffic to pass through so the ghost client cannot find the ghostcast server that way. Also usually solved using the wattcp.cfg file by entering the server ip address and gateway to connect to.

I could not find an explanation for the error 30 in the symantec ghost 8 knowledgebase, so i am curious what that may mean. Could you post that logfile, or at least the relevant part(s) ?

Rijk

 

 

 

Message Edited by Rijko on 05-18-2005 06:26 PM

Hello Rijko,

Let me start by saying you are one of the most helpful person I have ever seen in a community forum. You really take the time and effort to help people and I appreciate that.

Now back to the problem I fixed the problem in the following manner. It appears as if our ghost account did not have enough privileges to remotely add clients. Once I gave this ghost account, the necessary privileges everything worked liked a charm.

However, here comes the problem the drivers are recognized fine but the ghost process freezes right in the middle of pulling or pushing an image. Can you suggest me some pointers on this matter. Have you ever encountered this problem where the image cloning process freezes before the process is complete? In the driver setup page of the Ghost console the “MODE” is set to “AUTOMATIC” for these DELL Latitude Laptops. Is it necessary to set the mode as “RECEIVE_MODE = 6”

Once again I really appreciate your response. You have been extremely helpful.

- Bullshark3

hi Bullshark,

thank you for the very nice compliment !!

I try to help as best as i can and support what i am advising with as much facts and considerations as i can. There are a lot of great contributors on this board, but i really appreciate the compliment.

I am glad you've come a few steps closer to succesful Ghosting.

And yes, this 'freezing' is often seen. Fortunately, the reason as well as the solution are usually simple - initially labour-intensive because of testing maybe.

The problem in 99% of the cases is either the wrong NDIS driver version, (el90x.dos) or a (missing) ghost parameter.

NDIS driver :

i sometimes have to look for and test over 10 different NDIS driver versions before i find one that works really good. I could connect to the network fine, start ghost and then i would get into problems. Dumping, creating, whatever. Sometimes dumping is fine, but restoring an image would freeze or the other way around... annoying.

Ghost :

on the bootflop, usually autoexec.bat calls for ghost.exe. (after loading the nic drivers)

Ghost can be called with different parameters. What usually solves the problem is starting Ghost using the -FNI switch. ( here is a list of switches )

FNI switch : Disables direct IDE access support for IDE hard disk operations. It asks the bios for help. This alternate way of addressing the harddisk solved most of my problems.

(For systems using SATA disks, and ghost problems, the switch would be -NOIDE. Solves the problem usually.)

You may find the Symantec Knowledge base for Ghost 8x 'hot topics' handy - it covers some nice topics and i like to read up on those sometimes.

Other possibilities :

• try to boot as basic as possible - mouse drivers sometimes are a problem, enhanced redirectors too, usually they take up too much memory as i never load dos memory managers for ghost.

Receive_Mode :

on the client bootflop, the Receive_Mode overrides the setting you set on the Ghostcast server.

Symantec states :

---

---

So the setting of 'automatic' on the ghostcast server causes a client to use "Receive_Mode=4". As Symantec tells us, some drivers cannot work properly with this setting.

If you are creating a bootflop for every type of machine (instead of creating 1 bootflop for all) there is no need for using the "Receive_Mode=6" unless the driver causes problems.

Just to be sure, i use the setting 6 because it is the most flexible and up until now, it works on every machine. I have not seen much difference in speed using this setting.

Incase you feel you may not have the correct NDIS driver, PM me your Email address and i will send you mine.

Rijk.

 

Message Edited by Rijko on 05-20-2005 09:37 PM

Hello Rijko,

Sorry could not respond sooner. I was not feeling well for the past couple of day. I am back now and here are the updates so far.

The el90x.dos driver does not work for this laptop. It gives an error something like "Driver mismatch". "Press any key to continue. Will not load drivers" after that "Error 33: Will not bind"

The closest driver I have been able to partially attempt ghosting is "el556.dos" but for some reason ghost will freeze in the middle of pulling an image. The time it freezes is random. Sometimes at 3%, 55% or 82% before completion. I have checked various details like enabling the -FNI switch while creating the drivers but nothing seems to help. I need your opinion to know if there is any alternate compatible dos driver that will do the trick. In addition, did you enable/ disable any important features from the BIOS when ghosting latitude C600. Additionally I am trying to pull an image with "windows XP SP2". I have enabled all needed settings through the firewall like enabling "Ghost ngctw32", "remote desktop etc. I always appreciate your input. Thanks

- Bullshark3

"Mind is a terrible thing to waste."