Oakie

If you created a ghost boot disk, maybe go back and make sure you created the one for multicasting ? In the image below, you would need to be sure to choose the SECOND one "Network Boot Package" ....with support for multicasting. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/ghost-getting-started-standard-boot-package.jpg

I vote for logmein as well. You install a small agent on each home pc. Sign in to your free or paid logmein account on their site. They show the machines that you can log into. You click the one want and in a few seconds you are remote controlling the machine as if you were sitting right in front of it. regarding VPN setup: On XP machines you can set up a PPTP VPN . START > Control Panel > Network Connections > Create a New Connection > Setup Advanced connection > Accept incoming connections > NEXT > Allow VPN connections. > Check the box of the user name who will be allowed to connect to this machine. This will set that Xp machine to be able to accept incoming VPN connections. You essentially have a no cost VPN server. On your home router / nat box you will have to forward port 1723 to the IP of your XP VPN server machine and 'allow VPN PPTP or L2TP' Passthrough somewhere in the router config. It varies by router, but it's straight forward enough. At work, you get on another XP machine and setup the VPN connection, similar to above except you choose to "connect to a network at my workplace" (that would be your home XP VPN computer). The catch is, you will have to know the WAN IP address at home in order to connect. Likely you have a dynamic WAN IP, so you'll want to sign up for a free dynamic domain service so you can just type in an address "gecko.dynalias.com" for the connection so it will resolve to the correct Wan IP at your house. Once connected, you can map a drive to shared folders on your home computers and transfer files back and forth. After all that, you might find that your home uplink speed and the VPN encryption could turn out to make the connection terribly slow. Alternately, you could use the built in Remote Desktop feature instead. You still need the dynamic domain name service, and this time your forward port 3389 on the router. If it were me, I'd do the Logmein deal instead.

I use the startup script / shared folder method to put wallpaper on the kid's desktops. In this case, I guess I really just liked the instant feedback that Purgos provides that says "Files copied Successfully" or not.

I use it to push out .msi installs to lab computers no problems. I have used it to do .exe installs where there is some kind of silent or unattended switch support without problems. I was using it this week to push out 100MB video files to 36 hosts desktops simultaneously across our 10/100 lan. No problems. There is a specific situation that crashes Purgos.. I can't recall exactly when it is.. but it isn't a terribly serious problem, just an annoying glitch during some aspect of configuration that is immediately cured on a restart of Purgos. Some issues : Check your software firewall on XP pro clients, if it's on, you'll need to make exceptions for purgos. Generally if you can access a machine using the administrative share then you'll be good to go. Example if you can access a machine in explorer like this: \\lab-01\c$

Take at look at the most excellent, opensource, multi user WORDPRESS. It requires php and mysql. If you have a linux server great, if not you can install a WAMP server on a windows box in minutes using something like easyPHP or Xampp. drop the folder with the Wordpress files into the server, navigate to the install folder and it starts right up. answer a few config questions and it's ready to go. I believe this is the exact system edublogs uses. http://edublogs.org/ http://mu.wordpress.org/

Another easy to use photo album is zenphoto. It's very very reminiscent of the original clutter free coppermine gallery. http://www.zenphoto.org/

Craig, I want to thank you for telling me about SpecOps - I am rebooting 161 pc's with SpecOps GPUpdate right now, it is a wonderfully useful product. - Thanks Roland. ps. Does any one know how I can easily tell which users / computers are logged in to the Domain or are switched on? Yes, the LanView3 product tells you EXACTLY which machines are alive and who is logged on. Lanview3 excels at remote wake, logoff, reboot and shutdown. It's free. You must try it.

Take a look at a freeware and very simple program called 'Steel Run-as" I use this program to run an old adobe graphics program that will only run under an administrator account. http://www.steelsonic.com/steelrunas.htm

I do it that way too. \HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\ Modify the Wallpaper key to c:\SchoolLogo.bmp . I send the SchoolLogo.bmp file to the client computers remotely using the freeware program Purgos.

After a bit of fiddling, I've sorted out a method to deploy XP in my computer lab using WDS in Native mode. The main steps are: 1) Configure WDS server to capture and deploy images. 2) Configure client to boot from network card and sysprepping XP for automatic installation. 3) Capturing sysprepped XP image from client to WDS server. 4) Deploying sysprepped XP image from WDs server to client. Here's a look at step one: 1. Configure WDS server to capture and deploy images. Install WDS on your Windows 2003 Server. On Windows Server 2003 SP2, go to Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Add / Remove Windows Components > Windows Deployment Services. If you are using Server 2003 SP1, you have to install RIS first, then upgrade to WDS using the Windows AIK. Download the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK). Windows (AIK). Burn the Windows AIK image file to a DVD with IMGBURN (free) or mount the Windows AIK .img file to a Virtual CD/DVD Drive. On the desktop create a folder called WDS temp to store the following 3 files: Right click on the Windows AIK disc and find the WinPE.Cab file and extract the F1_WINPE.WIM and F3_WINPE.WIM bootable files. We need these in order to capture an image from our base machine. Put those in the WDs temp folder. Next, insert the Windows Vista DVD and copy the boot.WIM file located in the “sources’ folder. Paste that file in the WDS temp folder. Start and Configure WDS 1. On the Start menu, click Administrative Tools, and then click Windows Deployment Services. 2. In the left pane of the Windows Deployment Services MMC snap-in, expand the server list. 3. Click the server that you want to manage. 4. If the server is not in the servers list, right-click the Servers node to add a server. 5. In the Add Server(s) dialog box, click Another computer, and then browse to select the computer to manage. 6. In the Add Server Warning dialog box, click Yes to add the server. 7. Right-click the server that you want to manage, and click Configure Server to start the Windows Deployment Services Configuration Wizard. 8. At the Welcome page, click Next. 9. At the Remote Installation Folder Location page, click Next to accept the default location (C:\RemoteInstall). 10. If the Microsoft DHCP service is on the server that is being configured as a Windows Deployment Services server, set DHCP Option 60 to PXEClient and set Windows Deployment Services to Do not listen on Port 67. 11. On the PXE Server Initial Settings page, click Respond to all (known and unknown) client computers. 12. Click Finish to complete the configuration. 13. Clear the Add images to Windows Deployment Services now check box, then click Finish. Add the Boot Images F1_WINPE.WIM and F3_WINPE.WIM to WDS In the WDS control panel, right click the “Boot Images” folder and select “Add Boot Image”. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/wds_mmc_add_boot_image.gif Browse to the WDS temp folder on the desktop where you saved the F1_WINPE.WIM and F3_WINPE.WIM files. Add both images, the restart WDS and 2 new boot images will appear in the “Boot Images” folder. We will use the “Windows Vista PE (X86)” image. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/wds_mmc_vista_boot_images.gif Create a Capture Boot Image for your XP machinesRight click the “Windows Vista PE (X86)” image and select “Create Capture Boot Image”. We will use this boot image to capture (transfer) the sysprepped XP image from the client to the WDS server. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/create-capture-boot-image-for-xp-machines.gif Name the capture image “XP Capture Boot Image” and save it to C:\RemoteInstall\CaptureBootImages (you’ll need to create the capturebootimages folder) and click Next. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/create-capture-image-wizard-settings.gif Import the XP Capture Boot Image into the WDS “Boot Images” folder. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/wds_mmc_add_boot_image.gif Browse to the CaptureBootImages folder and choose the “XP Capture Boot Image.WIM file you created previously. Click Next to add the image. When the image is added you will see it in the “boot images” folder. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/xp-capture-boot-image-appears-in-boot-images-folder.gif Import the boot.wim image into the WDS “Boot Images” folder. This image file is used for the DEPLOYMENT of images to client computers. In the WDS control panel, right click the “Boot Images” folder and select “Add Boot Image”. Browse to the WDS temp folder on the desktop and select the boot.wim image file. Click Next and name the file “XP Deployment Boot Image”. Click Next to add the image to the Boot Images folder. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/xp-deployment-boot-image-image-metadata.gif When the image is added you will see it in the “boot images” folder. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/xp-deployment-boot-image.gif Create an Image Group in the Install Images folder. Image Groups organize images into similar types. You must have at least one image group to upload images. In this example there are three groups, Administrative desktops, Computer lab desktops and Servers. Right Click on the Install Images folder and “Add Image group”. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/wp-content/add-image-group-to-wds.gif We are finished preparing the WDS server. You can see the rest of the steps to the tutorial on my website. I added the tutorial to help others get started with WDS and as guide to help myself remember how to do it since I only tend to image the lab once or at most twice a year. For the bandwidth challenged, note that there are several more screen caps. http://www.oakdome.com/lab/?page_id=78

paste this, including the colons into the run box. ::{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

ghost32.exe is the one that runs on the CD. remember that the BARTPE is made up using windows Xp or server 2003, those are 32 bit operating systems. ghost.exe is the old dos version 16bit. And no, it does not have to be version 8. I use version 11 in mine and it works flawlessly. Lets make sure you have the files in the right places: In here: C:\pebuilder3110a\plugin\ghost8 a folder called files and files called: ghost.htm ghost.inf ghost_nu2menu.xml switches.txt Now, inside the folder called files ghost32.exe When you build your BARTPE .iso file with the BARTPE builder, there is a button on the bottom left called Plugins. click that and it opens up a list of all the plugins that can be enabled or disabled in BartPE. Look for the ghost plugin and ensure that it is ENABLED. Now rebuild the .iso. When you build your new bartpe .iso file, ensure that you have NO ERRORS. you can usually live with warnings, but errors no. Burn your iso and when you boot up the new disc, you should see GHOST in the menu now. Yes, the bartpe disc will load the nic, start the network configuration automatically. On the standard BartPE build, you will have to manually go to the ghost menu. However, having ghost startup automatically is something lots of people have wanted to do in the past, that issue has been dealt with and you can do it too with some minor tweaking. I have done it , but it's been a while . You'll have to do a little googling or searching on their forum for the answer, but I remember it to be fairly straightforward. Good Luck.

Pop that disc into a client machine. Shutdown the machine. Restart it and insure that it boots to the CD-ROM. On my Dells I have to press f2 or F12 to get it to boot to CD instead of the Hard Drive. yours may be different. When the CD boots, it asks if you want to start network support. Say yes. It sets up the driver for your nic card, and then installs network components such as TCP / IP and automatically gets an IP address from your DHCP server. You do have a DHCP server on the LAN ? At this point, your machine is runnning completely off the mini windows installation on the CD and you have established a connection to the network. Are you with me ? Now you map a network drive to a shared folder on another machine on the LAN. lets say your machine on the LAN was named IMAGESERVER and the shared folder was named DELLGX620, BartPE has a mini GUI to do drive mappings, your mapping looks like this: \\IMAGESERVER\DELLGX620 The gui wants a username and password of someone who has permissions to write to the shared folder. Put the name and password for the admin of the IMAGESERVER machine. You are running off the CD, you are on the network, and you have a drive mapped to a shared folder on another machine on the network. All you do now is go into the programs and start ghost. ( I am assuming you copied your ghost32.exe into the C:\pebuilder3110a\plugin\ghost8\files folder at this point ?) If so then choose Local > Disk > to IMAGE. Pick the disk or partition you want to clone as your source, then navigate to the mapped drive you made earlier and pick a name for your destination image file. Click Save and pick a compression level for the file. Higher is smaller and slower to go across to the folder, but smaller and quicker to come back when cloning disks. DONE. depending upon image size and network speeds, could be about 20-40 minute process. Good luck.

I'm telling you.... BARTPE is your answer. Ghost's boot disc version is extremely limited in it's nic card selection. BartPE has a network card folder that you can add ANY driver you need. Lets say you had several Toshiba laptops that you want to ghost. You use a freeware driver backup program called windrivers and backup the toshiba's nic drivers to a folder. You would take those files in that folder and drop them into the BartPE nic card folder. burn a new BartPE cd with those drivers and Voila! you have network support for the Toshiba. You download the BartPE builder program. You pop in an XP pro or better yet Windows Server 2003 R2 Cd. You drop a ghost.exe file into a folder on the BartPE builder program. Now you click "Build" and it combines your Windows i386 files from your windows Cd and the files from the BartPE builder. That makes a new .iso file that you burn to a CD. That CD is bootable and now has quite a bit of support for most nic cards. There are sites that you can download "driver packs' that have nic card company drivers from A-Z. Plus like I said, you can add your own. you could easily build a bartpe disc that has nic card support for every computer on campus and then some. I've made a step by step youtube video for my site on how to build a BartPE CD. 5 minutes. Another 3 minute video about how to add nic drivers. Did I mention BARTPE is FREE ?? google it.

I have a tutorial for that on my K-5 computer lab site. Creating a standard ghost CD boot disk for cloning lab computers But that would not be my first choice to build a boot disk. I prefer to build a BartPE bootable disk with ghost on it. Main reason being that the BartPE CD will come right out the box with support for many more network cards. You can EASILY add your own network card driver files too. This is a huge advantage over the ghost CD setup, allowing you to ghost computers across the network on a much greater variety of machines. Not to mention that a BartPE Cd can be used for quick and dirty data recovery and lots of other useful things with the proper plugins. My second choice would be to use the netbootdisk.com method. I can't be bothered with having to download that boot disk setup designed for a FLOPPY and then jumping through some NERO burning hoops to convert that to a bootable CD. Although once that is done, I do like the slick method of simply dropping the old DOS ghost.exe file into a shared folder and calling from across the network with the bootable CD.

I use Purgos. Short learning curve, easy deployment. It's free.

try the command line ? use the split switch -SPLIT=x | Split image file into "x" megabyte segments.

Nice list. One I find indispensible is Kelly's Korner. The site has lots of info for Windows XP, but I just use the registry tweaks collection from time to time on workgroup or standalone machines.

That's too bad, I use the turn off script quite a bit when I do remote software installs. I also use the .adm file on my server to restrict what the users can do. There is a quite a bit of talk on their support forums regarding scripts. It appears that there is supposed to be a wmi interface that will allow some control of the program. That management interface is not available at the present time. In my opinion, Steady state is not ready for it's intended audience of schools and libraries unless it's functionalities can be managed remotely. Steady State Support Forums

Microsoft Steady State I have used the Shared Toolkit for 3 years now. Does the job of Faronics Deep Freeze, but it's free. Free in dollars, but costly in learning curve , implementation and management. Steady State is the new replacement. Let's hope this one actually does what it says on the tin. Here's what it says on the tin:

Two different hard drives makes good sense to me. 2 drives that were identical from the same batch could conceivably suffer from the same failure at the same time, no ? Two different drives could have the same mean time between failure in hours, but with different manufacturing dates and different construction materials, seems like you could increase your odds that the failures would occur at separate times. I have a win 2oo3 fileserver box with software raid. It works excellently. I have even replaced one drive so far. I simply partioned it to match the working setup, and the raid process automatically rebuilt the drive into the mirror without a problem. I also have a win 2oo3 box with low budget promise tx2000 raid 1 controller and it runs excellently as well. I image the OS partition of both boxes on a monthly basis and keep the data on a separate partition that is backed up every night. My hardware raid card has one slight annoyance in that it at installation of the card, it only wants to load the raid drivers from a floppy. So I have to have a floppy drive on the server and a few floppies handy to support the card.

an older version of LANSchool. works great.

I use a free and excellent program called Purgos to install .exe and .msi files. From a list of your desktops, basically pick the computers you want to install the software on. You point to the folder that contains the .exe file on your admin machine, then enter the name of the file with a silent install switch. "setup.exe /s". Various brands of installers will use a different switch, but you can find the switches here: After that, Purgos connects to the remote machines, transfers all the installation files and installs them silently. I don't suppose every program .exe file will install silently. The ones by "installshield" are nice because you can manually install them on one machine starting at the command line with an "/r" switch that records your answers to the install questions to an answer file. you simply include the answer file in the folder that contains the .exe and when you remote install it, the exe installs silently using that file. Very nice. It's gives you feedback when it works, like "installation successful". Google "Purgos". It also does remote file transfers and remote control. it's one of those programs that installs the agent on the client automatically, simplifying things a bit for you.

Ghostcast. I am a computer teacher in a lab with 36 computers and we have no onsite tech support. I experimented a little and found imaging to be a very simple and quick solution. Fortunately the computers are all the same make and model. At the beginning of the year I rebuild a new or updated image with all the service packs and new software. Then I multicast the image to the lab machines. 20 minutes later it's done. Fast, easy, reliable method for the last 3 years.

I recently began using this and it was a promising program. I used it to wake and shutdown the computer lab each day. I never did get the internet blocking to work, it locked up machines when I used the "Get Attention" feature, and it occasionaly crashed on the server. But I liked the potential of it. The layout was clean, it had a low learning curve and of course, it was free. I'd like to see it go opensource and see it grow and thrive once again.