Symantec – A Windows System Admin's Blog

How to Multicast a Ghost image (GhostCast) using the Altiris Deployment Console 6.9

We recently needed to image a large number of machines in a short amount of time. Anyone who has dealt with Altiris and use Ghost as their method of imaging know that Altiris wont by default Multicast the image and will instead push it out individually to each client that connects. So here is a … Continue reading

Fixing LiveUpdate was unable to find any products to update error when running Live update for Backup Exec 2010

I recently performed an install of Backup Exec 2010 R3 for a client, after doing the install and setting up the shiny new LTO-5 tape drive I decided it would be best to run LiveUpdate to make sure we were running the latest release. So I open up Backup Exec console, navigate to Tools and … Continue reading

Speeding up LAN based Automation OS boot times using a Custom TFTP Server for Altiris (for WinPE and Linux)

One of the more easier ways of speeding up your WinPE boot times via PXE are changing the default TFTP server which comes with Altiris. First of all, open up the PXE Configuration Manager and disable Multicast since the WinPE image cannot be transferred over Multicast anyway(only DOS supports Multicast via TFTP). This simple tweak … Continue reading

BackupExec unable to read or write to the Database

Today when checking one of the servers I manage, I got an error when opening up the BackupExec 12.5 management console. The error was “Unable to read or write to the Database” which I found a bit puzzling. I checked to make sure SQL Server which hosted the BE database was running, and it was. … Continue reading