Boot Camp and Ghost

[yeldarb]

Most of the IT folks in my org use Ghost to image PCs, so they're familiar with that process.

 

I tried the following, but I didn't get the results I expected:

1) Run Boot Camp Assistant, partition the drive, but quit when it says Install Windows

2) Insert a bootable Bart PE CD (containing Ghost32 and some usual PC utilities) and restart holding down the C key

3) From Bart PE, run Ghost, choose Partition From Image to write the windows partition, quit Ghost

4) From Bart PE, run DISKPART.EXE and set the partition active, reboot

 

When I option-boot the Mac, however, I'm not seeing the Windows volume as a choice. What am I missing?

 

I don't want to use rEFIt because it would be some overly complex steps for some of our IT people who are mostly familiar with Windows PCs, not Macs. I also don't want to use another cloning/deployment method like Bombich's NetRestore, for the same reason.

 

What's interesting is that I CAN get this to work if, between steps 1 and 2 above, I actually go through the long (!) process of manually installing Windows, rebooting to it, and THEN reboot to the Bart PE CD and Ghost our universal image onto the same partition, overwriting the Windows install I just did. That works, but it takes ten times longer. It tells me that there isn't anything wrong with my Windows image or deploying it, but rather either the dummy MBR record or else perhaps something missing in the part of EFI that tells it where to boot a BIOS-dependent OS like Windows.

[erbic]

Have you tried formatting the partition first, then quitting the Windows install and trying Ghost?

 

I'm just throwing that out there, but you did say that it works if you install Windows first. Maybe it's just because the partition is properly formatted.