making restore cd

sinus

anyone know how to do this for win?

Boston

what do you mean?
a bootable cd that will format your hard driver and install you operating system and all your drivers on it?

sinus

yup....darn straight


and i know it can be done...dont tell me otherwise

Frank Grimes

You could take an image of the install with Norton Ghost or Powerquest Drive Image and copy it over onto a cd and then use that.

Boston

id advise against that approch unless it was allways used on the same system.

as for the cd, it much beter to get to grips with it and just manualy install the os, at least then you know how.

i wouldnt know how to go about making your own, id imagine there wouldnt be much demand for such a thing

Frank Grimes

Yeah, I'd agree with you there. I'm just guessing he needs it for his own PC.

..much beter to get to grips with it and just manualy install the os..

It can be a pain reinstalling though once you do know how

sinus

reason being is:

lab with 15+ computers all same spec
JIC of probs would like to have restore cd rather than have to travel 2 hours drive to the centre to repair

thanks anyhows

Boston

for me its to damgerious, ive know these resote cd to delete all partitions and format the whole drive and then install the os.

besides, even i like to be able to choose were i put the os instead o just banging it on the c drive which is often better to have your frequently accesed files on.

Boston

Originally posted by sinus
reason being is:

lab with 15+ computers all same spec
JIC of probs would like to have restore cd rather than have to travel 2 hours drive to the centre to repair

thanks anyhows

then why dont you make them one,.

i persume you have the licence for the os of each of these, make a bootable copy of the os, and add all the needed drivers to the cd.

may require afew more clicks of the mouse at the end, but just as effective and as close as your going to get to the real thing

Renton

Its actually not too hard to do, I did it here in the cafe where I work. Very handy since I can reimage a pc in about 7 mins, using a bootable cd with a couple of batch files :cool:

For this guide, im assuming that your pc's use computer names like "Com1, Com2, Com3 ... etc", im also assuming that you're using IDE Cdrom drives, (aoatapi.sys). Infact im making loads of assumptions.

Ill give you a quick run-thru:

Firstly, you'll need

* Norton Ghost (preferably 6.0+)
* A CD Burner
* Blank CD (or more, depending on size of image)
* Patience + Fairly basic technical knowledge

Now, assuming you have all of the above, just do this

Setting up:

Set up one "Model" Computer, on this computer, set its Computer Name to something like ComX, anything that is unique and not already used.

Set it up perfectly, with all the software you need on it, its profiles etc.

Once this is done, You'll want to make an Image of the partition, to place onto a restore CD.

So to do this:

Remove the harddrive from the Model computer, and put it in, (as a secondary harddrive) in another PC which contains a CD Writer.

Boot up from a bootdisk which contains ghost.exe, and make an image of the partition you just set up. E.G. restore.gho
note: If the partition is > 600 Mb's, Use the command line parameter "-SPLIT 600" This will split the image into 600 Mb Chunks

Place this file on the Primary Hard drive. Once everything there is done, you can replace the hard drive into the model PC.

Wait hang on, where are we now

Okay now you've done the following

* Set up a model PC, with Windows installed just how ya like it
* Saved an IMAGE of that partition onto another computer which has a CD Writer

still with me ?

okay lets move on......

Creating a Bootable CD

Back into windows on the PC which now has the Image File saved on it (restore.gho)

Now you have to create a bootdisk, and your Burning software will take a 1.44 Mb Image of that, and place it on the CD (lets it boot from CD)

Get yourself a blank disk, Put it in your drive and set it up as follows:

Start -> Run -> Command
format a: /s/q
copy c:\windows\command\mscdex.exe a:
copy c:\windows\himem.sys a:
echo device=himem.sys > a:\config.sys
echo device=aoatapi.sys /d:restore1 >> a:\config.sys
echo mscdex /d:restore1 /l:x > a:\autoexec.bat
echo x: >> a:\autoexec.bat
echo ghost -clone,mode=load,src=restore.gho,dst=1 -batch >> a:\autoexec.bat


(you might want to change that line to suit your needs, currently, its will restore "restore.gho" onto the First & Primary Hard Drive)

Now download this -> http://var.gameshop.ie/aoatapi.sys and save it onto the floppy disk

* The disk you've just created, will boot into dos, and have Cdrom device drivers loaded, and the cdrom drive will be mapped to X:

Load up your favourite CD Burning Software (in my case, Nero 5). Set the filesystem type to "Bootable ISO", it will ask you somewhere along the line to insert a bootable disk, Insert the disk you just made, and let it grab an image of it.

Add Ghost.exe, Ghost.env and Restore.gho onto the disk.

Burn it, boot onto it, and Weeeeeeee, automatic restore disk

I hope this helps you out m8

(btw, If you're making images of NT Clients (nt/2k/xp), reply and let me know, as theres a bit of an extra caper you have to do.)

Rent

Spunog UIE

Originally posted by Renton


(btw, If you're making images of NT Clients (nt/2k/xp), reply and let me know, as theres a bit of an extra caper you have to do.)

Rent

Do go on kind sir always wanted to make one.

Using win98se on c:\ win2kpro on d:\

Tell us about the win2kpro bit so i can try it out.

This would make a fantastic guide.

Thanks,
Gid.

Renton

aw, yeah i remember doing that guide , Em, you need to use ghost walker (ghstwalk.exe) which comes with ghost

infact, you could use one of the free tools from www.sysinternals.com to change the SID aswell.

Basically if you make one Win2k PC, then clone it 10 times onto 10 different pc's, and try to get them all to see the server, only 1 will be able to join the domain.

So you need to run ghostwalker on every pc after its restored, before you rejoin the domain.

You can also use ghostwalker to change the computer name.

Sorry, I used to be alot more motivated gid

Renton

Renton

infact that guide is pretty useless these days cos the latest ghost burns directly to cd.

denis

daveg

Renton good guide. We setup the same thing for a cybercafe with 13 machines (all same spec). To add to your guide I would recommend partitioning the harddrive into drive C & D. As you said make PC1 the model with all drivers ect. Then roll out the image across all the machines. Then make all those little individual changes such as computor name, IP address ect ect.

You will now have all your machines as you want them. Next take an image of all your machines and dump it to drive D. Once this is done download tweakUI and hide drive D. That way no one will delete your image (as they won't see the D drive). The drive will be visible in DOS.

The reason I feel this is a better solution is A/ Ghost can be really finnicky with scrathed CD's & B/ the image will restore quicker from a harddrive than from a CDrom.

Spunog UIE

Originally posted by Renton

Sorry, I used to be alot more motivated gid

heh heh and by motivated ya mean bored ?

ya cheers no problem, latest ghost be handy alrighty.