Unattended CD or RIS

It does!!   We've been a big fan and user of ghost now for a few years thankfully like you mention on identical hardware, generally 1 image will service (over the course of a year) all new machines ordered (so could be Dell, HP, A N Other.. whom evers cheaper *sigh*)

This is why I believe I need to change our processes here where I work as I guess we've just been very VERY lucky in regards of ghost working or not.  And we do spend a heck of a time now clearing machines out before handing them back, again thats a newish thing to some people here but when you've had a machine thats been on 24/7 for 6months it WILL clog up it's fans!!

Thats one thing I wanted to see what others did, in which order to process in..  Like I said so far I've experimented with DriverPacks and did look at Ryans but unless you download his beta update it's quite old (July 07 I think?) so was looking into other routes or waiting to see whether there were any major issues with Ryans beta before going down that route.
nLite I've got but not really played with, BUT I do see the potential for configuring the PC just how you want it which is so time consuming atm.  WPI I haven't really looked at in detail yet as last time I looked at it the howto was quite confusing (nowt like the one here!!) plus some of our "specific" apps aren't bundled into MSIs yet so I've added that to my list of things to work on... 

RogueSpears util was actually one of the things I found recently while begining to look into this that made me think about the RIS route..  But I can see where your going (and the advantage) of getting things working on DVD first then squirting the whole thing into RIS, therefore only having to really update one source (the dvd) at any one time.

The way I'm thinking (and tell me if I'm wrong) build up initially onto dvd (I already accept it'll be too large for CD) then once happy, possibly inject into RIS to allow network installs therefore we now have one off & odd specs covered.  Also using the same method i can also resort back to ghost for mass install on identical kit but using the UWXPDVD or RIS to do the initial rollout & config.

Rob

Last edited by unseen (2008-02-29 04:27:13)

On a mission to re-educate users the Clue stick way!

PS almost every program you can think of has been added to WPI over the years.
You won't need to reinvent the wheel - somebody has already posted a method to automate the install of almost any progams you may need to install. If not they will fall over themselfs to help you...

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Oh Believe me... I got it after nearly 4hours on the phone to the us speaking with Adobe (who I have to say have been and still are very VERY helpful.. Take problems with their apps quite seriously!)  Basically the problem that has pushed/shoved/spur'd me in this direction was a wonderous bug that meant flash worked as an administrator (so myself and other tech colleagues would always see it working) but log in as a user or even a power user and blamo.. No flash, doesn't even think it's installed! Big WHOOPS!  But I did learn something.. NEVER EVER assume that no-one reporting a fault means there isn't one.. If I'd not become (and I'll admit to it!) content with the image I'd possibly have spotted this major cockup sooner.  Now I can't fully point the finger at our image screwing up but initial tests I've done so far do hint at it, so hopefully I've learnt my big lesson for this year (famous last words! )

Sysprep IS a PITA...  I readily admit it.. and when it breaks it generally breaks quite interestingly!  But having hacked at it now for a few years (and with some recent input and advice from DriverPacks very own JakeLD) I'm still willing to let the old dog have it's day once I've got a new 'system' in place to build the clean masters (I could mention Landesk... but I'd never lower myself that far! ) to be fair once I've got the start of the disc running and then add to it, it will be interesting to see at some point the time difference, so currently to boot, image and get to first login I'd say it's currently around 10-15mins (using usb pendrives preloaded with the ghost image)

And thanks for the tip for Office!

On a mission to re-educate users the Clue stick way!

My last real hands on experience with ghost was when I used 6.2 Corp.
After that, I used WDtools (free), maxblast (free), acronis (sometimes free. I have a NFR full suite), and paragon (a trial is free but I could get NFR full suite).
I have a boxed ghost 10 I never looked at because.. (Well, Because it is not Corp.)

I miss the command line for forensic (That was cool). I miss the ease of use.
I miss ghost.
But, I can do what I did in ghost in paragon and acronis, and the free hard disk managers by seagate/WD/IBM are good too.

Last edited by Jaak (2008-02-29 18:25:11)

If I remember right... (Can't find my copy on my home machine) We're still using 8.3 Corp as it's the last "decent" version before they went a little erm.. Nuts!!..    I keep getting phone calls asking if I'm going to upgrade anytime soon and the stock answer so far is "Yes I will.... When you put it back the way it was!" which usually gets a small chuckle from the Symantec sales droid..

Not that I have any major issues with it, well.... Apart from the newer versions aren't backwards compatible when it comes to image read/write (But I could be wrong there and doing them a disservice) again the old chestnut of time crops up, as is usual boss will ask for the latest bleeding edge image but won't give any time up to test/eval the new tools..  Well he wouldn't till now, I'm begining to see this flash issue as more of a blessing than a curse (I'll probably regret saying that at some point!!)..

Other imaging software we've used I've mentioned very briefly and thats landesk, and gawd it's a pig, it's slow, it's painfull to operate and it just seems a plain waste of time!  No support whatsoever of multicasting, and woe betide anyone who try's to image 5 machines over it eep!

If I can find a quicker method (and we're doing it the hard way.. USB Booting UBCD4win > Ghost32 > Image off usb) and that takes (inc boot time of ubcd) 10minutes, but from your comments overflow I can see an extra 20 mins a box, but like you say it's a "master" build everytime, I'm begining to like the idea...  You mention 75 apps... I'd say (rough count) 30 could be more but I doubt it.. Only trouble causes I can possibly see are Java and .net (required for 2 of our internal apps..)   

Oh Overflow you mentioned you add updates via nLite that aren't in ryans, is that litterally just getting the list off ryans so far then downloading from MS Download centre the remainder?

Thanks again for your suggestions and comments I am taking them all on-board

Rob

On a mission to re-educate users the Clue stick way!

hat off, understood this topic quite well, this is what i do really, as in ghosting at present,

a little tip for imaging, if you want to utilize full UDMA functions with ghost try this

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stu … dma/devel/

2.7 version is very stable, and use the overlap switch "/O" for extra reliability, yes a small hit in performance is hit, but still Ultra DMA will be active, so a lot faster either way, speed difference to expect in ghost 30 to 60% increase in speed and because the CPU will not be getting pestered by the hard drive any longer, compression speed will increase a lot aswell, comes in handy when multicasting for sure, and the extra speed at compressing can't help, but of course there is always a downside, it doesn't always work, 2% of the time it may fail, so out of a 100 machines it may fail on 2 (and one more thing, do not try this in VMWare, version 5 supported this, but version 6 does not, DMA functions are already in VMWare by default, so this program will corrupt DMA memory)

there's other versions there on the site, like XDMA and some other, but in all honesty i have not tried them, took a while to create a cd with this version, and i had 2 cd's, one with and one without (yes i could of created 1 cd and create a bat file that showed a choice if to enable it or not....problem is i don't know how, scripting is not for me i can tell you)
and it was difficult to get it integrated with this http://www.netbootdisk.com/

but got there in the end

however XDMA unlike UDMA works with chipsets that don't utilize the south bridge, at the time of me using this driver in dos environment the systems we had were all old, so i chose to safer option and used UDMA2, however i may try out XDMA as i'm using ghost on new systems now, and motherboard companies are trying to eliminate the need for southbridge chipsets, as southbridge's actually degrade performance now because system are getting so fast

just thought you should know, (unless of course you already do)

OverFlow

you mentioned about RIS, (http://forum.driverpacks.net/viewtopic. … 82&p=3) and been reading a lot over at MSFN, i knew it existed, but never could entertain it, as it requires windows server 2003, which i've tried, and to be honest, i was messing around with security options, and i broke it, it wouldn't let me install programs,

i only tried it because it's been a long time since trying windows 2000 server (i was young then)

but the fact is, i was in way over my head, windows server 2003 was....well to much, too many options, and the manual and help files makes the bible look small you know,

and the fact that i broke it within 2 hours, well we all have our limits, and our maximum potential, well windows server edition's of any kind is way over my I.Q. level (no time for beating about the bush), and i admit it,

so without windows server RIS is out of the question (or at least not practical to use)

but you and people in MSFN i have to admit got me curious, so whilst digging around for info on "CD image ISO for PXE booting" and "UBCD4 Windows booting via PXE", i kept running into people having wars with each other which is better Imaging based, or RIS installs, this got me curious even further,

so after more digging (and listening to more people fighting with each other what method is better or not, (i say if there both good, then learn both)) i surprisingly found this very interesting website, and obviously my eye's lit up,

and i was hoping if you or anyone here could shed some light,

(i apologize, i know this is off topic, however i have every intention of utilizing Driverpacks with this program)

i found this topic so instead of posting in above i posted here, and put link above so you know what I'm talking about and where I'm connected to

anyway this is the website and program,

http://www.windowsdream.com/

i just wondered because of this

http://www.windowsdream.com/winner.html

seems really interesting, hasn't been updated for a while, but if it allows me to create a RIS, without having to learn RIS, well that would be great,

could you shed some light on this, is it good, no good, throw job, or good for windows for dummies (ME) but doesn't nor would it ever replace a full on RIS set-up.

Last edited by Registered (2008-04-03 17:16:47)

Just thought I'd pop my head in the door briefly and say thanks to all the team, especially overflow for his advice with unattended installs.  I'd like to say all went well with 'Beta 1' of my unattended... Unfortunately it didn't and I think I'd probably call it more an 'Alpha 1' release

I'm having a break at the moment from trying to bugfix an annoying problem that only occurs once the unattended is sysprep'd, essentially everything appears to work ok but just as minisetup fires up "c_20127.nls" is listed as missing.  Various searches point at nlite being the cause, how well that's what I'm looking at now.  Personally I think perhaps I've been a bit too vicious in the language removal so that's my first point of call.  Ever encountered that one on your travels overflow or is this as my various searches seem to point to a 'sysprep' only glitch?  I do like the various fixes listed even one by JakeLD that I'll experiment with too but the best one was to remove the "InstallFilePath" line from sysprep and that does at least make the error go away, but I'm not convinced it's fixed so I've got my bugspray and a heavy duty swatter and that will be this weeks job.

Hopefully if I can offer any help to others in a similar situation (No budget.. cobbled together hospital network... *ahem* oh wait wrong situation!)

PS.  WPI is VERY good!!.. Well recommended Overflow.  (Are you on commission for them... if not why not? )  Showed a few colleagues the "Beta" and they were very impressed... Even with it only installing 5 items so far (they're easily pleased!!! )

On a mission to re-educate users the Clue stick way!