Reclaiming a Symantec Ghost client license

Products

Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

You have a client computer with a hard drive that was cloned by Ghost, and you need to reclaim the client license for use on another client computer.

Resolution

WARNING: These procedures erase all data on the entire physical drive, not just an individual partition. Make sure that you intend to erase all data on the drive. Verify that you are performing this operation on the correct drive. To verify drive numbering, use the following command: gdisk /status

Method one for wiping a client drive.
If you need to reclaim a license from a client computer, you must wipe the client computer's hard drive by performing a low level format using Gdisk. The syntax for wiping the drive using Gdisk is:

gdisk /diskwipe

The is the drive's physical position on the IDE channel, or in the case of SCSI drives, the drive's position on the SCSI chain relative to other hard drives. To verify the drive number, use the following command line:

gdisk /status

Note: in a 32bit environment use gdisk32.exe instead of gdisk.exe. Gdisk32.exe can be found in the X:\Ghost\ directory when booting to a Ghost created Windows PE boot package.

Method two for wiping a client drive.
If an existing computer entry in any computer group has the same MAC address as the new client, the new computer will not show up. This should happen only if you have removed the NIC from the old client and put it in another computer. Since the old computer entry is not being used, delete the old entry from all computer groups and reinstall the client. For more information, see the document Cannot see Ghost client computer in Machine Groups in Ghost Console.

If you are using Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 or newer and you currently have the Ghost Client installed on the machine you want to wipe clean, you can run a task to erase that machine.

Go to Tools > Erase Machine.
Give the task a name.
Browse to your target machine or group.
Select your option for "Disks to Wipe."
- Note: If you select "All Disks" Gdisk will wipe all disk attached to the machine, including external devices.
Select other "Options" as desired.
- Note: "Secure Erase (6-Pass)" meets DoD standards.
Execute the task.

How to wipe a client from the Ghost console.
Once you have wiped the drive of the client computer, you can then remove the client definition from the Console. Before you can delete the client computer, it must be removed from tasks that use it. To do this, use the script called ' delclients.wsf '. See below for the location of the script.

Technical Information
When you clone or load an image to a computer with Ghost, or when a client is recognized by the Ghost Console, it puts a fingerprint on the computer's hard disk. This counts as one client license. The total number of licenses used is equal to the number of computers that are being managed by the Console, plus the number of computers that have received an image from or have been directly cloned with Ghost.