[kortmann]

A friend has given me a Dell laptop that, while old, seems in good shape. It is a Latitude CPi. It has Windows XP Pro SP3 installed. It lacks speed, memory, hard drive space and recovery media but otherwise is great. You can't beat the price. I first sought to use Ghost 15, which I really like, to make an image of the "C" drive and store it on an external drive. There is not enough memory to install Ghost on the Dell. Could I somehow use my HP desktop to access the "C" drive on the Dell and image the OS drive from there? Ghost is installed on the HP as I use it to back up that machine every day. I also have another unregistered (as yet) Ghost disc as each is good for one computer.
Thanks in advance for any help,
Ken

"God, give me patience or an untraceable handgun."

 

[spunk.funk]

Well you can pull the HDD out of the laptop and attach it to a USB adapter and attach it to your desktop along with your external drive and use Ghost to clone to the other external. Or get a copy of Ghost Cast Server.

 

[kortmann]

I admit I had never heard of "Ghostcast Server". I searched to learn more and ran across this.

"You do not have to install the Ghost 15 program on any computer to allow you you make an image backup: the Norton Ghost 15 Boot CD can indeed be used to produce backups of any Windows XP installation, even on a computer other than the one where the licensed program was originally installed: simply insert the CD, shut down the computer, switch it back on, select "Boot from CD" and when the program starts, select the required hard drive partition. You can also use it to Image any other partition.

(You may have to change the BIOS to allow the computer to be booted from a CD)

Of course, due to differences in hardware/drivers etc between machines, the Image backup may not work on a different computer.
The backups MUST be stored on another partition or external USB drive: do NOT run any defragmenting programs on the drive or partition containing the Image backups, as this may cause problems when reinstalling the image.

To reinstall the OS or contents of any other partition, again boot from the CD, select the required backup and after a few minutes the job will be done!

I have used this method many times: I make an image backup of a computer before starting to remove virus/spyware infections (if any Operating System files have been compromised by the infections, these may sometimes need to be removed by the cleaning programs, if they cannot successfully be cleaned). Having an image allow me to 'start-over' if it all goes bad."

Do you think I can go into the BIOS in the laptop and set it to boot from the CD drive and then just use ANY Ghost 15 disc to boot and image to my external drive? I was under the impression that I had to install Ghost to the laptop to do this.

Ken

 

[kortmann]

It seems to not work. Error reads "Cannot find file x:\Windows\shell\AutoTest.cmd"

Ken

 

[spunk.funk]

What does not work? You didn't specify which method you are using? At what stage do you see this message? Please tell us step by step what you are doing so we can help you further.

 

[kortmann]

Hi spunk.funk,
I'm sorry. I'll get the hang of communicating eventually. I was referring to the method I ran across while searching for info on "Ghostcast Server". the method you suggested earlier. The error appears while trying to boot from the Ghost disc (about when the Ghost screen should appear). The laptop has only 256 mb of memory and it looks like that's the most it can take. Physical limitations on the use of my hands makes pulling the hard drive every time I want to backup the "C" drive problematic.
The term "Ghost Cast Server" does not appear in the help docs. of my version (v.15) of the software. In addition, I am not at all familiar with using DOS although I should become so (if I have to). On the positive side, my friend DID give me a floppy drive for the laptop and I have a few blank discs. I have two desktops in the house that share internet access along with a TiVo on a Wireless G router. One desktop using an Ethernet cable and the other a USB adapter. They are not networked yet. That's something else I have to learn to do.

 

[spunk.funk]

You have to make a Ghost Boot CD with "Network Boot Package" ....with support for multicasting. from the GUI of Ghost (see Attachment) And boot the laptop with it.
Here is step by step instructions for Ghost Cast Server. Scroll down to Section 2 Image Creation