topic Re: DR Dos start up disk assistance in Operating System - Microsoft

DR Dos start up disk assistance

Billy Nelson — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:19:48 GMT

I have created a DR Dos boot CD to boot the PC's at our University. The pupose is of course for ghosting pc's as well as other administrative functions. I want to be able to map a network drive but this is where it get's sticky. The drive will switch nearly everytime we boot to the CD.

What I would like to accomplish is having the tech prompted for a PC name and then using that PC name to map the drive letter to. When we replace a PC we always ghost the drive of the outgoing PC to the replacement pc in case we missed any files that we needed to save. I am trying to dumb this down as much as I can to make life easier on our 'not-so-technical' techs who do not understand the net use command.

Re: DR Dos start up disk assistance

B. Boxma — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 03:13:03 GMT

Hello Billy,

can you use unc paths to avoid mapping drive letters (f.e. \\server\share)?

An other option is to create a boot CD based on the Windows XP operating sytem and using startup scripts or shortcuts on that. In that case, you can put a version of Ghost (and even FireFox etc.) on the CD. I like PE Builder: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/.

Re: DR Dos start up disk assistance

Billy Nelson — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:47:46 GMT

I thank you for your response but I think I did a bad job at explaining what I was looking for. The techs that will be making use of this CD are not very seasoned. mapping drives and using unc paths are a little beyond their scope and they really haven't expressed much intrest in learning.

That is why I would like to have them prompted to enter the new pc's name and then have a script automatically use that to map a drive for them. Then they will know to universally use the I: drive to store the images.

I have tried to get them prompted and the info be saved as %pcname% and then use that wildcard to map the drive but either I have been failing at getting the wildcard created or you can't use a wild card in the unc path while mapping a drive.

Re: DR Dos start up disk assistance

B. Boxma — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:05:42 GMT

Hello Billy,

Have you tried somthing like this:

@ECHO OFF

CLS

ECHO PC-name:
set /P PC-name=

net use L: \\%PC-name%\share

Should work with MS-DOS, don't know about DR DOS.

Re: DR Dos start up disk assistance

Jon Finley — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 11:48:53 GMT

I believe the the SET /P toggle only works with XP CMD environment.

Billy - my University is using BartPE to load the environment for Ghosting. There "should" be SEVERAL good examples out on the net of exactly how to make a bootable CD that contains ALL of the tools you would ever want.

Once at the Desktop, you have access to SEVERAL of the standard XP commands, including the NET USE command.

BartPE is only one tool. WinPE is another. Either one would work well for you, and make your imaging process MUCH easier.

That being said.... If you have created the "Ultimate DR-DOS CD", then there should be network tools on the CD that will allow you to connect to shares and map drives.

Jon