Question about Ghosting software

[Wanabe]

When you use Ghosting software to create an image of a computer's HDD, do all of the computers you are copying that image to need to have the exact same hardware configuration?

Thanks,
Wanabe

[reboot]

Yes, and no.
Ideally, they would all be identical, however...
If it were Windows XP, then it makes less difference than if it were Windows 98. XP is much more forgiving of hardware changes, but that creates another problem.
XP's activation. You'd have to have a separate license for each computer.
I have used ghost on computers that have the same motherboard and cpu, with slightly different video/sound/RAM/NIC combinations.
Ideally, I set one up, with a fresh install of 98, and ONLY install the motherboard drivers. Ghost as many as needed, then install the specific drivers needed on each machine. This kind of defeats the purpose of ghost though, because it takes just as long to ghost and then install drivers as it would to install 98 and drivers.
Ghost may be a little faster, because once it's started, no user input is needed. Unless you've got an OEM install diskette, you have to babysit the Windows installs.

[Wanabe]

Thanks reboot.

You bring up a good point about the XP activation. Most of what I was considering to Ghost are 98 machines which, unfortunately, are all over the map as far as the hardware is concerned. As you mentioned, it would probably take me just as long to install the Ghost image with minimal drivers and install them later than it would to simply do a regular install on each machine.

Thanks for the input.

Wanabe

[glc]

It would be worth building an image if you also have to install a standard suite of applications, you could remove the ENUM key and dump the cabs and a driver library onto the hard drive just prior to creating the image.

[reboot]

Yes, you could save a ton of time installing software that way, and drivers would be on the disk, instead of hunting around for the diskette/CD.

[Wanabe]

glc,

Could you sort of walk me through what you're talking about in more detail? I do have a standard suite of programs that I'm installing to these machines. I can't tell you how many times I've installed Office, Symantecs, etc.

Thanks!
Wanabe

[glc]

Okay - put a machine together with minimum configuration - video card only, and use a standard VGA driver instead of a card-specific driver. Don't load any motherboard drivers, just install 98 and leave it at that. Install all the Windows Updates that are NOT hardware specific that you want. Then install all your standard applications and configure them the way you want. Then make a \win98 folder on the hard drive and copy all the files (but NOT the subfolders) from the \win98 folder of the CD into it. Then take an inventory of hardware in all the other machines, and make a \drivers folder on the hard drive, copy all drivers you need for the various hardware on all the machines into it. The bottom line is to get a machine all set up the way you need *except* for hardware-specific stuff. Then you go into the registry, change the Windows install path from the CD to c:\win98 (as I remember, it's HKLM/software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/setup - source path?) and then delete the whole HKLM/enum key. Do NOT reboot - and then do what you have to do with Ghost to create your image.

The result will be an image that has no enumerated hardware or system-specific drivers. When you start up a machine that's been imaged this way, just follow the procedures in the ENUM thread in Tips and Tricks for getting the hardware and drivers installed, it should take about 15 minutes per machine to do it from first bootup.

[Wanabe]

Thanks glc! I understand what you're saying now.

Wanabe