Ghost Solution Suite: Booting over PXE to WinPE for re-imaging, then booting to installed OS

Posted by uberdanzik on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by uberdanzik
Published on 2012-09-19T21:40:37Z Indexed on 2012/09/20 3:39 UTC
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I have 40 networked computers that need to be re-imaged each night over a network via an automatic and unattended process. This is to reset the computers to a default state, as well as update the computers to the latest software loads. I'm using Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5.

My process so far is the following:

  1. Client begins in a powered down WakeOnLan accepting state.
  2. Ghost Console task uses WakeOnLan and PXE to boot the client into the WinPE environment.
  3. The client connects to the ghost console and reimages itself successfully.
  4. The client closes WinPE and restarts.
  5. PROBLEM: The client boots into the WinPE environment again, instead of the newly installed OS (Win7)

I need it to boot into Win7 once so that I can run a few configuration batch files, then shut down into the WakeOnLan state again.

Ghost console even reports an error on the process, that it never rebooted into the OS.

Right now it seems that there is not an option to stop it from booting into the PXE server's WinPE image after re-imaging. Even if I set up a PXE boot menu with other boot options, its pointless, because it will always boot the default option. I would expect the ghost console task to be able to influence the PXE boot choice somehow. What do they expect us to do, turn the PXE server on and off manually?

How can I get the client to boot to the OS after re-imaging? Thank you.

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