Windows Server - Technology

The Blog for IT solutions from Microsoft. By Richard Wu

Setting up a Ghost network disk for Virtual PC ⁄ Virtual Server

If you want to create a Ghost network boot floppies to run inside of Virtual PC / Virtual Server.  Symantec provide a nice wizard to do this with - but unfortunately they do not include the driver for the emulated network card used in VPC/VS.

The driver that you need is the NDIS2 Unified DC21x4 driver from here:

http://developer.intel.com/design/network/drivers/nd2_300.htm

Once you have downloaded this package you will want to point the Symantec Ghost boot floppy wizard at the 'mslanman.dos\drivers\ethernet\dc21x4\dc21x4.dos' file.  You should not need to specify any special parameters for this driver in order to get it to work.

Posted: Sat, Oct 15 2005 18:20 by Richard | with 2 comment(s)
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Comments

Klaus Jakobsen said:

And it does work. Only little downside...is that it's so damned slow, when comparing to normal Ghosting speed. I end up getting 30-40 MB per minute. Compare that to a normal PC which ghosts between 150-300MB per minute...

I've just installed KB958162, which was supposed to do a lot to network speeds...but I can't see any difference in speed when ghosting. It would be a very great thing if this issue was resolved (Symantec Ghost is the easiest way to convert any conventional PC into a virtual PC, without altering the software in the OS).

# March 12, 2009 1:55 AM

Richard said:

I think the problem is related to the networking stack in Virtual PC.

As I know, the Virtual PC networking stack don't include all the functions. For example, multicast clustering is not support in VPC. You need to use VIrtual Server to do so, as Virtual Server's networking stack got all netowlring features.

# March 12, 2009 2:39 AM