LAN Standard Subcommittee Report Steve Sears was not available so a brief summary of the LAN standards activity for the month was presented. Actually, there were two meetings held to accommodate the individuals who were unaware of the first meeting. At the meetings, Ghost software was explained. This product is used to create a profile of a hard drive so that installation of desk top computers for a large number of people within a department can be streamlined. Instead of taking several hours to load each machine with software manually, once the Ghost program profile is set up, a tape or CD can be run and the loading time averages about 15 minutes.
Much planning goes into the process so that implementation can be as smooth as possible.
Software is loaded via Ghost for the basic software requirements. Additional software needed by an individual is loaded separately as those are products not used by everybody in the department. A boot disk is used to start the PC and provide basic network access, then Ghost Pro is run to copy a stored disk image to the PC's hard drive, providing a basic installation. Win95 can reconfigure hardware differences on the PCs, and this is made easier if the OS's install files are made part of the Ghost image. Microsoft's System Management Server is used to apply incremental, scheduled software upgrades to the client machines.