BOSWELL’S Q&A: Ghost in the Machine
Bill: I’m trying to deploy desktop images in my small
company. I’m using Sysprep on the source desktop prior to imaging
with Ghost. When I apply the image to another desktop from a
different manufacturer, I get a blue screen of death.
BOSWELL’S Q&A: Ghost in the Machine
Bill: I’m trying to deploy desktop images in my small
company. I’m using Sysprep on the source desktop prior to imaging
with Ghost. When I apply the image to another desktop from a
different manufacturer, I get a blue screen of death. These are
standard PC desktops without any special peripherals. What gives?
–Ed
Ed: Ed: I’m betting that your bugcheck (Blue Screen of Death)
problem is a result of a difference in the IDE interface used
by the different machines in your organization.
When you run Sysprep on one platform and deploy the image to
another platform, you would ordinarily expect Plug-and-Play to
handle any hardware differences (assuming that the machines use
the same version of Ntoskrnl.exe and Hal.dll). However, mass
storage drivers represent a special case. The boot loader needs
to load the mass storage devices prior to initializing the
operating system, so there’s no opportunity to let the
Plug-and-Play Manager shuffle around drivers. For this reason,
it’s fairly common to get a 0x0000007b bugcheck following the
deployment of a Sysprep image to a machine from a different
vendor, or different models from the same vendor, even though
you’re using what appears to be a vanilla IDE controller in
both cases.
One way to avoid this problem is to include all the mass
storage drivers in the Sysprep image, not just the drivers
used by the source machine. The version of Sysprep.exe that
comes with Windows Server 2003 has a special switch for doing
just this. It’s called -bmsd. Here’s how it works.
On the source desktop, create a folder called Sysprep at the
root of the C drive (C:\Sysprep). Put a copy of the Windows
Server 2003 version of Sysprep.exe and Setupcl.exe in this
folder. Extract them from the Deploy.cab file on the Setup CD.
You’ll find Deploy.com under \Support\Tools.
Put your Sysprep.inf file in the same C:\Sysprep folder. You
probably prepared this file using Setup Manager.
Edit the Sysprep.inf file with Notepad. Add these entries to
the bottom of the file:
[Sysprep]
BuildMassStorageSection=yes
[SysprepMassStorage]
Sysprep.exe uses these entries to provision the file with
the mass storage drivers.
Now, open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Sysprep.
Run sysprep -bmsd. You’ll see a pop-up window with a large
hourglass open for a few seconds, then close. There will be
no other graphical indication that the process has succeeded.
Open the Sysprep.inf file and look under the
[SysprepMassStorage] section. You’ll see dozens and dozens
of entries.
Now run Sysprep -quiet -reseal -reboot. This will take
quite a bit longer because Sysprep has to collect the
specified mass storage drivers.
When you apply this image to the other desktops, the
deployment should go smoothly with no bugchecks.
Hope this helps!
–Bill Boswell