Ghost 8 Multicast not working on GA-K8NF-9 Mobo

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DigitalisAkujin

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Messages
187
I have been trying for three weeks so I swear whoever helps me fix this problem I'm sending 10 bucks to their paypal.

Here's my problem:
I work at a Lan Center (www.czgaming.com) and I have 40 top of the line gaming machines with these specs:
AMD 64 3500+
Giga-Byte GA-K8NF-9
1 GB DDR
Nvidia 6800 GT
Hitachi 120GB SATA

I have Windows XP SP2 perfectly setup. Updated, all drivers working, all games working, a perfect and tested setup BUT I CAN'T IMAGE!!!!

I tried Ghost 8, Ghost 2005, Acronis True Image and NONE support my network card. So right now I am basically reduced to taking the drives out one by one and imaging. At this rate I can do about 5 - 8 per day with the other various things I have to do during the course of the day. And well basically...that's rediculous.

The systems also do not have a floppy so I've been using a bootable CD. The motherboard comes with NDIS drivers and they work somewhat. They get an IP through DHCP and they do communicate through the network with the ghost cast server but once it starts it freezes fairly quickly. I am really out of ideas. I would like to just get this working it's really annoying. Even if it's only one computer at a time it's better then doing it the hard drive way.
 
get a supported network card and use it to dump the image down. I end up doing that from time to time. I find the hardest thing to dump and image from or too is a laptop.

I find an Intel based card works like a dream.

I resort to that sometime. I know cracking open the box sucks but it better than manually installing XP or pulling the HDD out.
 
Can't you load a custom driver onto the ghost disk? I havent used it in a loong time so forgive me if I'm wrong.
 
I had a problem imaging trhough Altiris Rapid Deploy and a SiS nic. It ended up being a problem with the server having a 10/1000 nic. Forcing 10/100 on the server nic fixed that issue ... i dunno, i've never had much luck with ghost ... good luck figuring it out
 
LittleMe said:
Can't you load a custom driver onto the ghost disk? I havent used it in a loong time so forgive me if I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

Yea thats what I wound up doing. The problem isn't actually getting the image but sending the image to the clients. I can make an image locally. Thats actually the easy part.
 
Thats what I mean. A few years ago I had to add a driver to the boot disk to see some 3com 3c905c NICs so they could pull the image from the ghost server.

Also, what about PXE booting. Doesn't the new ghost support that?
 
Try the -noide flag or the -sata flag. I forget what the actual flags are called, but there is a ton of them listed on the Symantec web site. I had some trouble IPX imaging some of the newer dells, the flag helped, make sure you have the proper ODI drivers for the nics. It will be different from your regular drivers, check the motherboard manufacturer or the chipset manufacturer or the nic card manufacturer. One of them will probably have them. I've also noticed that some companies, namely Netgear, have a seperate link for Norton Ghost drivers which I thought was cool...if only others followed suit! :cool:

Oh, also check in the BIOS and disable legacy USB if you can. That causes problems occasionally too.
 
The driver on the disk that comes with the motherboard works. It gets an IP from DHCP but once ghost actually goes to start imaging it slows down quickly from about 5MB per second to 2MB and then just completly freezes. It might update every half hour or so but otherwise it's completly dead. Basically an unbearably slow ghost cast.

I'll try some of the command switches but I doubt they will work.

O and I'll try the legacy USB thing. Thats actually odd I never thought about that. All our mice and keyboards are USB so I actually need it enabled but I guess I'll use the 80 or so adapters that came with em. ;)
 
Why not just burn the image to a DVD or a couple of CD's. I know Ghost supports that, it should come out to about the same time as booting off the CD and pulling the image across the network.
 
DigitalisAkujin said:
The driver on the disk that comes with the motherboard works. It gets an IP from DHCP but once ghost actually goes to start imaging it slows down quickly from about 5MB per second to 2MB and then just completly freezes. It might update every half hour or so but otherwise it's completly dead. Basically an unbearably slow ghost cast.

I'll try some of the command switches but I doubt they will work.

O and I'll try the legacy USB thing. Thats actually odd I never thought about that. All our mice and keyboards are USB so I actually need it enabled but I guess I'll use the 80 or so adapters that came with em. ;)
Click to expand...

If it starts the download and things I would look other places than the NIC drivers. Has this setup been used to ghost images before? Maybe a server or switch problem. Check to make sure the cards are auto-negotaiting the speed correctly as well.

 
Well it is a lan center. Think of all the games. The MMORPGs take up 15-20 gigs on their own. FFXI (6 GB), EQ2 (With every update add 50-100MB + 8 GB), EQ1 (5GB), Warcraft 3 (7GB). Steam package with all games is like 10GB. It all adds up.
 
quite an image ...

are the computers connecting to a managed switch? it sounds alot like the problem I had with Altirs and the NIC not negotiating the right speed.
 
I have a router provided by Speakeasy (T1 providor) doing all the DHCP. It's basically a router hooked up to three 24-port switches. I don't know the details though. It was put in before I started working here.
 
Alright so far I have had progress by uploading the image from the main image computer to the ghostcast server to save. Took an hour and a half for the full 60GB. I disabled USB support in BIOS.

Then I tried doing five computers with no USB support and that failed. I took two of those five and now I am trying with the -noide switch. The two are now working decent at 387Mbits per second. The whole thing for two computers took two and a half hours for the full 60GB image.

After these two are done I am going to go ahead and try to do five at a time with the -noide switch. Also to save myself time I'm doing disk to disk at one imaging station so I'm making progress either way.

The image actually got bigger today cause we got Guild Wars. :D
 
When SATA drive first came out there was a patch for Ghost version 8. If you version is legit (which it most lilely is) I would look into that. when I worked for my college before I graduated we had to do this go get the computers with Sata drives to ghost. If i remember right we had to call there support and they email us the patch
 
Hello,

Well I been reading the post about your problems with Ghosting PC and since I have been using ghost for years (I ghost many PC labs at the university where I work), I thought I offer some help.

My first question for you, when you create the ghost image, did you us any compression? The reason I ask this is that when I deploy ghost images that are nearly 40GB before compression, it only take me around 28 minutes for about 21 PC’s. Thus if you used max compression when creating the image (this will mean an increase in image creation time) when you go to deploy the image, it will go much faster.

On my systems at work, I can generally push the ghost image out from the ghost server at around 350M and on the receiving PC’s it is restoring at around 850 – 950. Note, my PC at work are not nearly as good spec wise as yours, so I expected even better results for you.

Thus, I would highly recommend that you create ghost images with max compression if you are not already doing that.

Next, when you are trying to push the ghost image out to all of the PCs are the PC all on one switch or spared across several switches? I ask this because I had the same problem many years ago with ghosting too.

After much work testing the deploy process, I found that if I deploy to PC that where on several different switches, my deploy speeds tank big time. What I found was that for each switch I had to cross, I lost at least 50% or more of my speed. Also, if you have any other devices (especially 10mbit devices) attach to the switches you are ghosting; this will tank your speed. I had one lab where the network printer was only 10mbits and useless I unplug that from the switch, the speed drop like a rock. The reason is that the ghost deploy will only go as fast as the slowest device attached to the switch.

Thus, what I did was to put all of the PCs you like wanted to ghost on the same switch and then plug the ghost server into the last port on the switch. This way all the ghosting stay on the switch and my ghost images just flew. Also, if there are any other devices attached to the switch that are not part of the ghost session, attached them to a different switch. I realize that in your case, you will have to “zone” the PC into groups on different switches, each switch handling a subset of the total number of PC to be ghosted. Just remember to leave the last port free to plug you ghost into on each switch. I know it a lot of work, but this sorted out most of my ghosting problems.

There can be many other reasons for the problem. In the last ten years of using Ghost, I have seem all sorts of problems with NIC, drivers, switches etc. Post back and let me how it is going, I be glad to help you help.

Oh, nice specs on those gaming PC’s

-Dyslextic
 
Haha thanks. I will definetly try to redo the ghost image. I have actually not compressed it thinking it would be slower so I'll do it the other way now. I'll probably have to do it overnight because a none compressed image being pushed from image PC to server is already one and a half hours.

The network is arranged like this as far as I know. I didn't do all of it myself but this is what how I think it is right now:

Code: 
T1 Speakeasy >> Router >> Switch >> Clients
                                               |
                                           Switch >> Clients
                                               |
                                           Switch >> Clients
                                               |
                                           10/100 Netgear Wireless Router acting as an access point.

Besides the fourty gaming computers we have two servers, two Point-of-Sale computers, and a Sony VIAO with 10/100 NIC on it.

I don't think the 10/100 has anything to do with it though because the NDIS drivers from what I understand only use the cards up to their 10/100 potential and never get to a gigabyte.


Tommorow I plan on trying four clients at a time with the -noide switch and see what happens. If that fails then I will try to actually figure out which computers are on which switch and then isolate them while I ghost them to see what happens.
 
wow, sweet setup, im hoping to set up a place like that someday.

back to the subject, im in iraq and every computer that has come on to the network here i have ghosted, (about ~1000 and growing)ive got over 20 different images of different models of laptops desktops, you name it, using ghost 8. the only problems ive ever ran into was not having the dos drivers for the NIC im using, i can send you the boot disc i currently have if you want to try that. all you should have to do is add the dos driver to a folder and edit the config.sys for a few lines.

[email protected] if you want it
 
Hello,

One question I do have is the Point of Sale systems NIC running at 10 or 100Mbits? The reason I ask this is if the Point of Sale systems are running at 10Mbits and they are on the same switch that you are trying to ghost all 40PC at once with, then the ghost speed will drop down to that of the slowest device attached to the network. This would create the effect you are seeing too.

I would recommend that you try to arrange the network switches such that the PC are group on each switch with one free port for the ghost server to be plug into. For example, since you have 40 PCs, I would try to make two groups, each group contains 20 PCs and each switch has pone group (hopefully your switches are at least 24 port switches). Thus on each switch would have an Uplink, 20 PC’s and one free port that you would plug the ghost server into when you need to ghost the group. Note, that is all I would have on the two switches, put the rest of the hardware (two servers, two Point-of-Sale computers, and a Sony VIAO) on another switch.

Also, while it does not happen all the time for me, I do have to use the "noide" switch on some systems that are purely "SATA" for the hard disk drives. In other words they don't have any ultra ATA attached hard disk drives just SATA attached hard disk drives.

Oh, while I am thinking about it, check to see if there are newer NDIS DOS drivers for the NIC. I see then help problem too. I look up the specs for your motherboards but it does not list the maker of the NIC. What I usually do is figure out who made the NIC and then see if they have newer NDIS DOS driver on NIC cards manufacture’s web site.

Let me know how things go and please feel free to ask me any question you may have on ghost.

-Dyslextic
 
I tried looking it up but as far as I know Marvell makes the NICS though I am not entirely sure. The drivers on the CD seem to work now and it's probably something with Ghost. I'm making slow progress. Right now I'm doing 3 clients at a time with an old image and making a new HIGH compression image with another server. If this high compression image works out then w00t. Will be able to finish imaging all the machines within a few days.

As always I'll keep you guys up to date till the problem is completly resolved.
 
Hello,

Glad to hear you are making some progress.

I think you will find that the High compress image will help you out.

If you have more problems, could you post any error message you get and also the command(s) you used to run ghost with. It would also help if you could post the version of DOS you are using to boot the ghost clients with and the contents of the "autoexec.bat" and "config.sys" files.

-Dyslextic
 
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