Norton Ghost Question

[T1T3SONET]

This is a question I've been pondering, but have not tried it yet. Let's say you have two PCs, both made by different manufacturers, different hardware setups, etc...if you make a ghost image of PC #1, and then take that image over to PC #2 and install it, will it work? I think it would (in theory), at least to the point where you could setup the OS to the new hardware it sees. Like I said, I'm going to try it for fun, just haven't had time yet!

Any comments?

[nietzsche]

When I was a lowly hardware tech (W95 was just coming onto the scene), what we'd do was install W95 just to the point before it would do its initial "detecting new hardware" thing, and ghost from there. What we'd find if it was allowed to go all the way through, and then be ghosted onto a box with dissimilar hardware, is that W95 would just not "feel" right, and ultimately crap itself.

Don't know if this has been addressed/fixed in W98, ME, XP, 2K, etc...

But it's something to think about. What you *may* want to do is, after ghosting the one onto the other, wipe out the registry and reinstall the OS. This *should* make hardware integration less buggy.

~N~

[dcongram]

Ghosting an image from one computer to another definitely works.

When the new computer starts up, the 'Plug and Play' portion starts and says 'New hardware found'. Some is installed by inf files...others by manufacturers disks.

Be prepared to have all driver disks for the 'new' computer's hardware, and about 3 restarts before you are finished.

Works with 95/98/98se/me/nt4/2000pro. (I've even done NT4 and 2000 servers)

[KorpDeath]

Depends on what OS. You can for the most part with Win95/98 but I would recommecnd doing something first. Before you shut it down to ghost it. Gor into regedit and delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ENUM.

That's the plug and play enumerator. Whithout that, the OS boots up and tries to detect all your hardware again. It's actually a cute trick.. I've done it when I've swapped out mainboards and wanted to keep all the sh$% on the computer.(being lazy).

I also use it when win95/98 tries to tell me I have 5 vid cards or 3 sound cards, etc. Works like a charm.

[T1T3SONET]

nietzsche and dcongram,

Thanks for the replies. Good tips to work with. I'll try to post the results, whenever I get around to trying it.

Later!

[T1T3SONET]

Thanks to you too, KorpDeath. You must've replied while I was typing my last post....

[KorpDeath]

Not a problem.

You're pretty quick on the keyboard...

[nietzsche]

You're welcome. I remeber when Ghost was Ghost 2.0a - Binary Research Ltd. Then Symantec bought 'em.


~N~

[Oso]

I've tried that several different times. Sometimes, depending on how different #1 and #2 are, it would work, sometimes, if they are completely dissimilar, it won't even boot the OS. It's all about how different the hardware is.

What I do now is:
Completely install W2K Pro, create a .inf file with all the dissimilar characteristics of computers on it, later do a sysprep.exe and ghost.

I will have to answer a couple of questions on each machine, but now, it takes me about 2 hours to have 50 computers up and running!!, instead of three days.

[ammo]

It's suggested that you use something like "sysprep" from microsoft to strip hardware configurations before creating the ghost image... when you ghost the other computer windows will then redetect the hardware and you should be on your way... (of course drivers for the other system must be availible...)

Search MSKB and ghost's website for sysprep.. you should get more details...

also for ghosting identical computers with NT/W2K on a domain you have to run a utility like ghostwalker to assign the installation a new SID....

Ammo