Sysprep question

Breadfan

I am doing the exercises in the MS Press Book for Sysprep and it has you run it with just the /pnp /noreboot switches because its just simulating you taking the disk out and putting it in another computer

My question is this: I am running VMWare (and even if I wasn't); how would access the image that I create using Sysprep? Would I choose Quit instead of Shutdown or would I choose Reboot?

I have a network setup with a server that can access the xp client but if Sysprep runs and then shuts down after I press Reseal, how can I access the image? I have Ghost 9.0 and don't know if this will be sufficient for this or not

Any help would be most appreciated. I know it's a simple thing that I just can't put my finger on. I don't have a lot of usage or knowledge with Ghost so any help would be great

Thanks

agustinchernitsky

Well.. Once it shutdowns, you just boot with a Ghost CD or Floppy and create an ISO image. I used two solutions:

Burn directly to CD-RW (not that good)
Burn to an ISO image on another workstation using network.

Breadfan

I have Ghost 9.0 and according to their website only versions 7.5 and 8x along with 2003 can be used with sysprep

I tried booting to recovery console but that didnt do any good. I will check at work and see if we have an older version like 7.5 or 8

Again, thanks for the response and help.

I am spending WAYY too much time on this and RIS because I am having so much trouble doing them in a lab. I know the concepts and when and when not to do them and I know the switches pretty well, but until I can sit at a computer and actually DO IT, I dont feel like I actually know it

agustinchernitsky

You know what I used? a Linux rescue CD... and copied the whole partition to an image tar.bz...

The bad thing is that it wont re-size the partition... so you have to use the same disk size or then use like partitionmagic to resize the ntfs partition.

ocriggins

Dude, I took the test today and as long as you know the basics of RIS, you're good to go. To me, it's not just what you know, it's reading in between the lines with this exam. Everything is put into the question for a reason.

ccnpninja

I encoutered the same problem. I am using VMware too. After I create the Master image, I prefer the "shutdown" option.
However, disks with VMware are virtual. Thus we should find a software that makes images of virtual disks, i.e images of the disk on which resides the guest OS.

I personally consider that I am installing XP pro from an image that had been copied to my local computer by some unnkown person. So the disk imaging process is transparent to me, although I must know how to perform it.

Sie

I may be misunderstanding but if you install VMTools you can cut and paste between guest and host os so if you have a Ghost image on host mahcine you want to use you can just copy across.

Breadfan

I use VMWare and have since moved on to other topic for the test, but didnt realize that we could just copy and paste using the VM Tools between the machines. Do they have exist in their own LAN or can ANY guest machine copy/paste to ANY OTHER guest? I know you do this with the host thru the shared folders but didnt realize you could do this with the guest machines.

I have just been practicing using -pnp -quiet -nosidgen -mini parameters after creating various answer files and creating device driver folders and having setup install those as well during the setup.

I also used the Server 2003 RIS and Sysprep Resource and Deployment Kit guides for help http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/reskit/deploykit.mspx

as well as the Mastering Windows 2003 Server book covering RIS and Sysprer sections and they were great. Probably much more than I needed to know for the XP exam but maybe I will be ahead of the game come time for the 70-290 exam

Good Luck and thanks again Sie

Sie

With installing VMTools you can copy between the host and the virtual machine.

From there you can copy between the virtual machines aslong as you have them setup within a workgroup / domain / same subnet.... the usual stuff.

Just remember that if you start using static IP address', VMWare has its own DHCP service which may not match the same IP address block your using and as such you wont be able to find the other machines on network.

Anyway i think im going off topic....

Sounds like your definetly going down the right path thou

Im getting there just never have enough hours in the day for everything!!

(Really must get round to booking my exam)

[Edit - typo's]

ccnpninja

Vmware only let me copy/paste from the guest machine to the root directory of the host OS (i.e C:\ ). I could not copy/paste to logical partitions I already have ( d: or h:)

Sie

I have copied directly from a network share onto the desktop of the virtual machine hosted on the host machine so im not sure whats happening with yours?

Even drag and drop, (have to pause for a sec for a small progress bar to complete before you can drop while it copies it between)

Maybe this is a newer version of VMTools i am using check out what version you have and what version is available.

Is it VM Workstation or VM Player your using?

ccnpninja

I am using VM workstation v5.0
Nevermind. I prefer to learn the professional way (with PE disks) even if it sometimes takes more time . That should prepare me for real situations

Breadfan

I am using VMWare 5.5.1 as well. Instead of trying to get vmware to "see" my usb drives and other guest drives i created on the same virtual lan, I just created another virtual disk for the same guest machine i was going to sysprep (because the other ways werent working)

Anyways, I just added/created a 2nd virtual disk for the machine (it thinks its a physically different drive anyway).

Ran sysprep -mini -quiet and it shut down the guest. then i booted to the 2 floppies with ghost on it and created an image called sysprep1 to the brand new drive

rebooted to floppy and copied image FROM 2nd drive and it rebooted, ran minisetup and POOF, new machine.

I wish I had thought of this before then trying to waste all of time manipulating vmware and not actually studying sysprep functions.

hope this helps. and thanks to all that tried to hammer the concept into brain. it was there, just needed to see it in action i guess.