Ghost Enterprise multicast issue..

[jbob]

I just installed Ghost Enterprise on my Win2k server box and I can't seem to get the multicast boot disk I made to assign the machine I'm trying to ghost an IP address. I created the multicast boot disk using packet drivers for a Cnet PRo200WL NIC. The packet drivers were on the install disk that came with the NIC, so they are right. The boot disk boots to Ghost, but multicast is not an option. I tried to ping the IP address I assigned in the setup of the multicast assistant, no reply. When I boot to Windows, I have access to the net and the rest of the network, so the card is working. Is there something in the BIOS that's disabled? The board is an Asus A7A266. I also tried enabling DHCP server on my router (all machines are static) and assigning an IP address, that way, but the machine does not show up in the DHCP clients table in the router setup when Ghost is fully booted. I'm going to try a different card sometime this week and see if that helps. Just thought maybe someone else has had this same issue.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Are you booting the Multicast CLIENT on the PC
that you want to image?

 

[jbob]

I went through the Multicast assistant and created the boot disk. I also imported the packt drivers from the install disk that came with the card. Ghost boots up fine on the client I want to push an image from, but I can't multicast.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Thats not what I meant.

In order for Ghost to multicast the machines, the machine
you want to push the image requires the client installed
and running (either on a Bootdisk or separate partition).

 

[gdtaylor]

1. Do you have a good understanding of how multicasting works? In order for multicasting to work you need to:

a. Start GhostCast Server on your Windows 2000 Server box.
b. Type in a session name for your multicast session.
c. Select whether you want to load an image from the server to the client machine/s or dump and image from the client to the server.
d. Browse and select the image file you want to load onto the client machine/s or type in the name of the image file you want to create on the server.
e. Click on accept clients.
f. Boot the client PC (not the Win2K server box) with the Ghost diskette.
g. You should now be able to select the Multicast option from the Ghost menu.

If the Multicast option is not available on the Ghost menu it is most likely because the packet drivers for your network card are not loaded properly.

2. Make sure your network card drivers are loading properly.

a. Boot the client PC with the Ghost boot disk.
b. As the diskette is loading press F8 the bring up the boot menu and press Alt+F8 to step through your startup.
c. As you are stepping through the startup look for error messages.

2. On your boot disk there should be a file called WATTCP.CFG. This file contains the IP address information. The file should contain the following lines:

IP=x.x.x.x <---- The IP Address you want to assign
NETMASK=255.255.255.0 <---- The subnet mask of your network.

4. Make sure you are using the latest drivers for your network card. The latest drivers can be downloaded here:

http://www.cnetusa.com/support/drivers/Pro200WLVer1.52.exe

5. I was going to give detailed instructions on creating an NDIS boot disk for Ghost multicasting, but that would take too long. If you want I can send you an image of a Ghost boot diskette pre-loaded with the correct drivers for your network card (minus the GHOST.EXE for obvious legal reasons).

 

[jbob]

Yes, I have used Ghost Enterprise to multicast before, just not with this card. The cfg file does have the ip address I assigned. The newest drivers have a folder with packet drivers, so I used that. The assistant didn't seem to want to find any NDIS drivers, so I used packet drivers. The workstation that I am pushing the image from does not have any errors or beeps when it boots from the disk like it has before when I boot up to a disk that's configured for a different NIC than is in the machine (I hope that's understandable). After I boot up, I can't ping the IP address I assigned to the box I'm booting to the disk.

 

[gdtaylor]

I stopped using NIC specific packet drivers ages ago as NDIS 2.01 drivers seemed to be more reliable.

Are the multicast options on the GHOST.EXE menu greyed out?

How are you calling the packet driver? Are you specifying a packet interrupt number? The line in your autoexec.bat calling the packet driver should look like this:

dm9pcipd.com 0x60

The card may not be auto-negotiating the speed/duplex mode correctly. Try forcing the driver to operate at a specific speed/duplex mode:

dm9pcipd.com 0x60 -xf <-- 100Mbps/Full Duplex
dm9pcipd.com 0x60 -xh <-- 100Mbps/Half Duplex
dm9pcipd.com 0x60 -f <-- 10Mbps/Full Duplex
dm9pcipd.com 0x60 -h <-- 10Mbps/Half Duplex

Have you stepped through your config.sys and autoexec.bat so you can see any error messages?

What message appears when dm9pcipd.com is loaded?

Regarding pinging, you won't be able to ping the card until Ghost is loaded and you select one of the multicast options from the menu as the IP address is not initialised until then.

 

[jbob]

I tried specifying the switches in autoexec you recommended, no change. I also created the NDIS2 drivers and the results were the same. I may just try a NIC that's already setup in the Multicast Assistant. I may be able to dig one up at work. By the way, its Ghost Enterprise 6. I checked Symantec's site and the oldest version that still has knowledge base support is 6.5, so maybe Ghost 6 isn't supposed to work with Windows 2000 anyway.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Actually, GHOST 6.01 was the first to support Win2k filesystem correctly (and NT4 SP4-5).

GHOST 6.5 was the first version with Desktop and Server Logo Certification.

 

[jbob]

So then I should assume that it will not correctly push a Win XP Pro workstation image to a Win2K server and back?

 

[LiLithTecH]

If you do not recieve any errors when it reads the drive
or during compression the image should be fine.