Question

Successfully Ghosted Optiplex 760 will not boot & cannot install from Volume License disk

Asked by: shinmaikeru

I will soon be receiving a truckload of Optiplex 760 staff workstations. When I got a loan evaluation 760 from Dell, it was pre-installed with XP SP3, but after I successfully ghosted the pre-existing staff image of our volume license XP SP3, it wouldn't boot, even after I tried a repair installation from the installation CD.

Neither was I able to install XP with our volume license CD, which is WinXP SP2.

The differences here are hardware differences between the two models: the old Pent4 Optiplex GX60 with ATA drives and the new Core Duo Optiplex 760 with SATA drives.

Incidentally, the Windows 7 beta DVD install worked just fine... and looked pretty good, too. However, our staff wants their customized XP work environment.

From Googling, I have gathered that lots of folks are having problems with the Optiplex 760 because of some kind of SATA issue, but none of the pages I found explained in detail. Some mentioned changing the BIOS from AHCI to ATA, and others mentioned having to press F6 at the beginning of the installation and load a machine-specific storage/disk driver.

I had to return the evaluation machine, so I cannot test these possibilities until the machines arrive, but when they do arrive I will have to get them on people's desks ASAP, so I am asking the experts.

While I am able to installing RAID or hard disk controller drivers at Windows install, taking that route  would necessitate creating a whole new image for these machines. I would much prefer to use the staff XP image I already have because it is customized for our institution.

Is there a way to add the missing SATA driver to a ghost image? For example, could I install the drivers in one of the old Optiplex GX60's that already works with the old image and then clone that to the new Optiplex 760?

Is there a way to inject the driver into the image I have on our Ghost server?

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2009-03-04 at 16:29:44ID24199952
Tags

Dell

,

Optiplex 760

,

Windows XP

,

ghost

Topics

Norton Ghost Backup Software

,

Windows XP Operating System

,

Personal Computers

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
5

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. Using Ghost 2003 to clone XP Pro
    I have an IDE HD and a SATA HD. I want to clone the C: volume of the IDE HD to take over all of the new SATA HD and make that my C volume. This is Win XP Pro. When I select CLONE from windows at the Ghost interface and choose the source/destination parameters it reboots th...
  2. Norton Ghost freezes on Dell OptiPlex 280
    I need to take an image of a Dell OptiPlex 280. I have created a boot floppy with the proper network driver using the Ghost boot disk utility. The machine seems to boot properly and load the network drivers. When it gets to the loading mouse drivers, it just freezes. I us...
  3. Ghost 7.5 - "No valid drive detected" error when tryi…
    I've been able to successfuly clone our ABS computers with RAID 0 SATA drives, so I'm a little perplexed at this error. I can boot up to the Ghost console with no problems, but Ghost can't seem to recognize the Seagate Barracuda 40gb SATA drive at all and gives me the "n...
  4. Cloning an Optiplex GX520
    In the past I have used Norton Ghost 2002 to create a boot disk that will let me clone one hard disk to another. This has always worked perfectly with our old range of PC's (Dell Optliplex GX110's) We have now upgraded to Dell Optiplex GX520's and I have found that my versio...
  5. Ghost 10 - SATA driver not recognized
    I purchased Norton Ghost in order to be able to restore a system disk on my IBM ThinkPad Z61m. Unfortunatly Ghost does not recognize my SATA controller, making a restore impossible.

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: igor-1965Posted on 2009-03-04 at 22:46:48ID: 23803041

Hi Micheal,

With respect to the new Dell SATA computers, indeed you have to change the BIOS from AHCI to ATA. Some people claim they managed to get XP running in SATA AHCI mode but I personally never seen such computer and per Dell Support WinXP requires SATA ATA.

Ideally (if you have hundreds of the different models) you need to create an "universal" image that does NOT contain any HW specific drivers. After such image deployed to a target computer (but before Windows bootup), the drivers specific to target HW are copied to the hard drive (to the location predefined in sysprep.inf). After computer started it runs Windows mini-setup, finds and and installs these necessary drivers.

I personally prefer to prepare such "universal" image on VMWare virtual machine rather than on a physical computer. But if you will be running only 2 different models it is not necessary. Just create a new image for the new model.

Let me know if you need more info.
Igor

 

by: shinmaikeruPosted on 2009-03-05 at 14:23:55ID: 23811669

I have been using Ghost Suite for a few years, but I never messed with the sysprep.inf because we have an XP site license, so there is no need to re-identify the machines.

Can you recommend a comprehensive how-to on the subject? I am searching Windows knowledgebase, but I am wondering if there is a good HowTo on cloning with Ghost using a universal image that you can recommend. I use Parallels on Mac, but I am sure that I could use Parallel VMs or just buy VMWare Fusion to use VMs as my universal images. It would save me a lot of time if I did not have to customize my base image for the four or five hardware types we have... also, I have to manage two language versions of Windows - Japanese and English, so everything has to be done twice, once for each language.

 

by: shinmaikeruPosted on 2009-03-05 at 14:41:04ID: 23811842

Just one thing... the Optiplex760 came with XP installed. I then used the Universal Network Boot Disk (www.netbootdisk.com) to boot the 760, switched to Ghost Disk 2 and ran ghost.exe and then successfully cloned from a GhostCast Server session.

The BIOS was set to ATA and remained set to ATA, I THINK. I will try it again on Tuesday, when the machines arrive, but I don't think the AHCI was the key.

I have read that there is a SATA driver that needs to be added, as I mentioned above. Looking at the MS KnowledgeBase, it looks like I would be able to add that driver to the image and specify that location in sysprep.inf. Is that right?

 

by: igor-1965Posted on 2009-03-06 at 11:14:58ID: 23820018

In sysprep.inf you will need these lines:

[Unattended]
    UnattendMode=DefaultHide
    OemPreinstall="Yes"
    OemPnPDriversPath=drivers\chipset;drivers\audio;drivers\net;drivers\modem;drivers\misc1;drivers\misc2;drivers\video;drivers\ahci
    DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
    UpdateInstalledDrivers=Yes

The relevant drivers must be copied to c:\drivers\xxx subfolders AFTER you have loaded your "universal" image. As far as I remember there is a OmniFS utility in Ghost Suite which makes it.

The question is how to automate copying of the proper drivers. I am relying on another tool (Altiris) to identify the computer model and copy the relevant drivers. Not sure if Symantec Ghost Suite includes tool able do it. Might be you should check out if there is something what Dell could provide (small utility reading Computer model from BIOS) or seek the Internet for any tool able to run in DOS and do the same task.

On the good side, Ghost able to create image directly from MS Virtual server / VMWare virtual server hard drive file. So it's quite quick to "take off" the image ready for deployment.

Sorry, I cannot give you any particular link for comprehensive how-to on the universal image. I was reading quite a lot of materials over the years and got some hand-on experience. I could only recommend to search for "hardware-independant image" (or similar) terms on Internet. Check-out materials related to Symantec or Altiris (these are good too).

With respect to the SATA drivers you might want to look at this discussion: http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Windows/XP/Q_23827099.html

As I wrote, in my experience, even if you install AHCI drivers you still need to change BIOS to SATA ATA in order to make computer bootable with WinXP.

Hope it will help.

 

by: shinmaikeruPosted on 2009-03-06 at 12:43:08ID: 31554132

Thanks. I will try your advice ASAP. Very comprehensive. Thank you again.l

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...