Ultimate Ghost CD

on Wednesday 01 November 2006 - 22:01:33 | by Tripper
I deal with approximately 2000 workstations daily. We keep a pretty good rolling inventory by replacing 160 per year. This means that each computer is updated every 5 years. Within the past 4 years, we have only purchased Dell's because of their service and their products are one of the best as far as mass produced units go.

Keeping track of images for each model of machine has been a bit of a challenge. Not only do we have standard desktops but we have desktops that need Adobe software installed for our graphics labs and various other specialty products as well. I had everything down to a science in that I had created a bootable USB drive and managed all of our images on one 80G drive. This worked great in most cases however a bit slow for USB 1.1 machines.

Recently, our computers, GX620's, have only USB support for KB and mouse. You wouldn't think this to be much of an issue however it played havoc with ghost and USB drives. After a few weeks of research and a few days of trial and error, I managed to create the ultimate Ghost CD.

This CD starts up in a menu and you select the appropriate desktop model which actually loads the correct network drivers. Additionally, there is a choice for USB images if needed. For hit and miss cases where I need to re-image a single pc, USB is fine. But if I am imaging several computers at once, netcast is the way to go.

So you select the appropriate setting and it loads everything needed for your session. It works out to be a great setup if you have the need to manage many pc's.


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