There's no problem with Ghost itself, it's the GHO image I'm using.

Here's the situation.

We have a standardized company Ghost image that I use for EVERY piece of hardware we have.  I've used driverpacks.net (kudos to them) to create an image that works on virtually every piece of hardware I have.

I've installed the image successfully on Lenovo laptops, Dell workstations, HP workstations, Acer workstations, Dell laptops etc etc.

But now I've hit a snag.

I have one HP laptop that has NO provision for enabling a SATA compatibility mode in the BIOS (Pavilion dv6000).
Consequently, while Ghost will put the image on the HD, when booting into Windows (Windows XP Pro, SP3) the system fails as no appropriate SATA driver loads.

This system has no floppy drive.

I have the recovery disk for the laptop, and I CAN get an XP OS installed and running, but it wouldn't be our model, and I don't want to spend several hours rebuilding a one-off laptop from scratch...assuming the upgrade to XP Pro from Home will work.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I should best proceed?

Can I use Ghost Explorer to add the required drivers to the HD and reference them in the autoexec.bat so they will load prior to the OS?
Are there any associated registry changes that would be required to get that to work?

Or do I need to bite the bullet and rebuild this the slow way?

@ Tempest8008


Quote:

This system has no floppy drive.

This is a shot in the dark--does the system go through an initial setup bootup where it asks if you need to add any drivers before the first boot--i.e. where you are supposed to hit F6 to add drivers?

If *yes*--would it be cost effective to purchase a USB floppy drive (approx. $15-$20) in order to add those needed SATA drivers from a floppy disk (I presume they're available from manufacturer's website)?

Unfortunately no, it does not go through that step.

I'm wondering if there's a way I can force that though...

I sysprep the image before using it to create the Ghost image...I'm sure I recall seeing a way to kick it off as though it has no installed drivers.

Will continue to investigate.
Thanks for your suggestions, NightOwl.

Anyone else have any ideas?

@ Tempest8008

I'm not sure if this is what you are after but installing SATA drivers to each laptop should only take a minute. TeraByte Unlimited has TBOSDT Pro which contains OSDTool. It will install drivers to the non booting Pavilion laptops. You can put the drivers on the same USB flash drive that contains OSDTool or you can have the drivers on the HD or a CD. TBOSDT is easy to use and does much more than just installing drivers.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/tbosdt.htm

Edit... OSDTool can be run in Automated Mode. This might be suitable for your situation.

@ Tempest8008

in the link :
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/howto-drvins-tbosdt-dos.htm

you can find a tutorial on "Installing Windows Drivers From a USB Drive" by using the tool Brian suggested

@ mariella

Thanks for that link. It is an early method of using TBOSDT to install SATA drivers and I've used it several times with success. It doesn't use the OSDTool. The Tool has been updated every few months and now no manual editing of scripts is required. Just follow the prompts in the GUI. There is a pdf in the TBOSDT download and using the Tool is described on page 27 onward.


Quote:

OSDTOOL is an interactive script, included with the professional version of the TeraByte OS Deployment Tool (TBOSDT), that provides a convenient way to use TBOSDT for the purpose of performing deployment-related tasks on Windows NT-based operating systems such as: • Installing drivers • Removing installed drivers • Changing the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) file • Changing the Computer Name • Configuring services