cloning win2k

[John3232]

Well, I have a win2k lab to setup with some nice dells. I
remembered that little pearl of wisdom about needing
sysprep to wipe the sids off the 2k machines before
cloning them. So I got sysprep and I kinda taught myself
how to use it. We have Enterprise Ghost on order from
sysmantec but it won't be here for another couple of
months. So, I'm needing to use our old floppy disk dos
Ghost 6 to do the job.

Well anyways, when i ghosted the 98 labs, i just cabled up
the harddrives and put a 98 boot disk (with ghost6.exe
installed on the c drive of the master clone) and pressed
F8. I then went to the startup menu and chose "safe mode
and command prompt". then i typed in "c:\ghost6" and it
just went to work.

Well it don't work like that in win2k. I suspect that it
has something to do with the fact that win2k isn't dos
based. I made a 2k boot disk from the 2k cd but all that
does is try to setup win2k. when i pressed f8 on bootup
then it gave me choices which include safe mode with
command prompt but no command prompt only. So what should
I do? how do i get those bad boys ghosted?

[pave_spectre]

Have a look at This Document its in Word format (http://www.geocities.com/burnieunitedsc/Sysprep.doc) .

I havent even read it properly myself yet so I dont know how useful you might find it, but it deals with using sysprep with win2k.

References to D:\* are the CD-ROM drive

[John3232]

thanks for reply pave, but my browser couldn't access the page you tried to show me. somebody said my problem is that win2k is on a NTFS partition, and not a 32 bit one, like 98 is, any ideas on that?

[pave_spectre]

I am also unable to access the link. Strange.

I dont know if the version of ghost you are using might be a factor. I dont know what version we use off hand, but it does allow for imaging NTFS partitions. Im sure of that because I dont need to convert the file system each time we reghost the machines. I cant really provide any more detail at the moment as I dont go back until monday so I cant just pull up the documentation (and theres lots of it).


EDIT -- Got the link to work - When the geocities error page comes up with the address http://www.geocities.com/burnieunitedsc/Sysprep.doc click in the address bar and hit enter and it should ask if you want to open or save the file.

[pentachris]

Ghost 6.0 supports the NTFS 5.0 file system, which is what Windows 2000 uses. It does not support NTFS 5.1, used by XP.

A Ghost floppy should be bootable. It contains it's own stripped down version of DOS with a low overhead, giving Ghost plenty of "room to operate."

[John3232]

thanks for the reply Chris? I Have both drives on the same ide cable. One set for the master drive (which has win2k on it) and the other for the slave. I made sure I ran sysprep on the master drive and then it shut down. Now at this point, what do I do? Do I try to boot the system with a floppy with the ghost6.exe on it? or do I boot it with a win2k boot disk (which i have tried but it only tries to setup the win2k os.)? I have to access the ghost function from a command prompt upon bootup but i can't seem to do that from the win2k boot disk. So you're saying I should just boot from the ghost6.exe and it should work?

[pentachris]

No need to PM me; either I or someone else will be along to help you out. :)

That's the great thing about the message board structure here - different people can see everything that's been posted and chime in if they can help. For example, I know absolutely nothing about sysprep; I was just trying to help you out with what I know about Ghost. :cool:

No, you don't want to use a 2000 boot disk to try to run ghost. It's designed for a specific purpose that has nothing to do with what you need. Like I said, you should be able to boot directly to your Ghost floppy. But you say you put ghost6.exe on the c drive? Your copy of ghost didn't come with a floppy or instructions to create a bootable floppy?

If not, what you need to do is, using a 98 machine, format a floppy and check the box that says "copy system files." Then put ghost6.exe on that floppy (I don't think there's anything else Ghost needs to run...). Boot to it, and from the a: prompt type ghost6.

[John3232]

well, i tried that and when i booted to the ghost floppy i got an error message that said "NTLDR MISSING press any key to start". any ideas on that?

[pentachris]

Ouch. You must have a version earlier than 6.0.3. Sorry, I didn't know until I looked it up (http://tinyurl.com/nq9c) just now.

Versions of Ghost prior to 6.0.3 do not support Windows 2000 and can only perform a direct sector-by-sector clone of the entire drive.

Versions of Ghost prior to 6.0.3 can correctly change partition sizes only on FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS (from Windows NT 4.0) partitions. When a drive is partitioned in a different format, such as the new NTFS in Windows 2000, Ghost can perform only a sector-by-sector copy. Sector-by-sector copies do not allow for changes in the geometry of the hard drive. Therefore, Ghost can be used to clone a drive to an identical drive for cloning or backup purposes. However, Ghost cannot be used to migrate a Windows 2000 partition.

[pentachris]

Or did you try to make your boot floppy from 2000, instead of from a 98 machine as I posted? Look here (http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/034d12503a06d36c8525692d0046dbfa/d5af24ac9d4ae51ec1256af7007dcfb2?OpenDocument&prod=&ver=&src=sg&pcode=&svy=&csm=no).

[John3232]

yep. it is an earlier version of Ghost. 6.0 I believe. I guess that explains it. But, I just got hold of a newer version, so I will explore that for a while. Thanks for the help.