Note that you'll need to have a Sysprep answer file created and the associated binaries. This post covers how to do that.

You should also have the Ghost Client installed on the image source machine. To do this use the Tools>Remote Client Install menu in the Ghost Console.

The rest of this post covers how to capture an image of a machine from the Ghost Console.

To capture an image in Ghost, we need an Image Create task. To make one of these go to the Tasks folder, right click, and select New Image Create Task. There are several items of interest on the dialog that comes up. The name can be whatever you choose, I usually make one image creation task per template machine. In the source machine section, browse to your template machine. If it doesn't show up here, you need to get the Client install working first. When I capture desktop images I always take the whole disk. You can however choose to only image a partition, or a different drive. You'll likely need to boot up with a Ghost boot disk to figure out the correct partition and drive numbers if necessary. If the source machine is joined to a domain check the Remove machine from domain checkbox at the bottom of the tab. Your screen should look something like this at this point:

For Image Name, click Browse, and then expand the Images column and click New… You'll need to give the image a name and pick a path/filename for it:

The Sysprep page is our second place of interest. We need to import the Sysprep binaries and answer file as well as tell Sysprep to perform a SID change. The first step is to import the binaries. To do this, click Sysprep Configurations, type in a name, and click Create:

Browse to the folder containing your Sysprep binaries and answer file and click OK. The Ghost console should tell you that this succeeded:

Your screen should look like this at this point:

Click OK

You can then right click your new Task and choose to "Execute Task":

 

Ghost will prompt for confirmation, and then the GhostCast server will startup and the source machine will reboot into the Ghost DOS utility. You can monitor the progress of the task both in the log area at the bottom of the screen (right click entries for more info) as well in the GhostCast server window which will be in the background.

 

 

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#1 re: How to Capture an Image from the Ghost Console

Thursday, November 26 2009 1:48 AM by Garth