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General discussion

Trying to ghost a machine on my home network

by Mojo_58 Aug 16, 2005 1:29AM PDT

Hello all,

I'd like to make an image of my machine and dump it to a network share. From here I can burn it to a DVD.

I am trying to start a machine with a boot CD. The boot image loads a DOS shell with NDIS network drivers. The process fails when it tries to get an IP address from my router (Linksys WRT54G with latest firmware). Perhaps the NIC can be configured with a static address via the protocol.ini file, but the documentation for Microsoft's client 3 is very scarce these days. If anyone has had better luck doing this, please, let me know.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Edward Fox

Discussion is locked

3 Posts
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Tell me if you fix it.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Aug 16, 2005 1:36AM PDT

Even I know better to try this. While I've succeeded with some network cards, what you noted is unlikely to ever succeed given such slim information to work with.

The problems are so perverse that I'm moving to Acronis and carrying an USB hard disk to pull this off.

Bob

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a tidbit of additional info
by Mojo_58 Aug 16, 2005 3:21AM PDT

Let me see if I can add some details...

The boot disk was created by the windows NT client disk creator. The MS-DOS client version is 3...2.2 works as well.

The driver is B57.DOS. This is a broadcom wireless network card...although it is using a cat-5e connection for this process. The network drivers load successfully at 100/full. I don't think this is the problem.

I have used this boot disk method with the same network card in a different machine. My gutt feeling is that the DHCP services running on the Linksys may not be compatable with the MS-DOS client...the windows NT DHCP services do work, however.

Could you expand on your explanation using the external drive, please. What version of ghost and are you booting from DOS?

Thanks,
Edward Fox

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It's Ghost 9 from memory.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Aug 16, 2005 3:26AM PDT

Besides the card issue, some non-Intel chipsets route the IRQs differently and the MS-DOS client disks fail. I offer no cure but know the issue and my lesson was to find another solution other than a network connection.

At the price of hours versus hardware, the external USB drive and Acronis can make this get done and we can return to work faster.

You are right that MS-DOS help is almost non-existant today. Part of the problem I run into is that while I may tell a person to change a line in protocol.ini, the next thing I find is that I'm giving a lesson in text editing from DOS. Ouch.

Bob

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