Bountyhunter50 Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 hey guys! Our 3 new laptops at my work (Lenovo T430) have a corporate pre-image on them using the GAG Graphical Boot Loader. Im 99% positive our corporate IT department will give me a 404 Error if I try asking for the password to access the pre-image file VIA the loader (Get the bad joke there? 404 Error Denial B) ) I did some reading and research, it looks like GAG actually can hide the pre-image files from viewing files within the ghosted image. My goal is to find the password file (I'm sure it'll be encrypted hopefully without Faults) and get into there to manage the pre-image myself (Long story short, Corporate managed to give us a corrupt image on all 3 laptops. Good Job guys! not...) Does anyone have any words of wisdom to go about finding said password file? I found some really intreaguing .GHO files that I want to explore, even if I could find the areas I want to keep up with, I may not have sufficient sudo privilages. Thanks for any help and advice in advance!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digininja Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 Word of wisdom - don't do it. If they give it you locked down and you are found to be bypassing those restrictions then you are probably breaking your company's policies, maybe even bad enough to get fired. Take the laptops back to Corporate and complain, also make sure your management know in case you miss any work or deadlines because of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bountyhunter50 Posted December 8, 2013 Author Share Posted December 8, 2013 No deadlines, but im doing this all for convenience for us in our shop. After every "rental" of the unit, we have to re-image them. Problem is they have old (possibly vulnerable to exploits) drivers and UBER stock software. And if a client needs this to run a large projector screen in front of their entire company, it's gonna bite us back if the unit asks for an update during the show (which has happened a few times and has led me to this) I'm making a .BAT file that can hopefully automate an install (have the downloaded install files on a USB and have the .BAT auto run on plugin), There has to be a simpler method though. To properly re-image these will take about 1/3rd of my shift alone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr-Protocol Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 Welcome to the world of IT.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bountyhunter50 Posted December 8, 2013 Author Share Posted December 8, 2013 Welcome to the world of IT.... Good thing I'm experiencing this now! Got an interview in a few weeks for a Systems Analyst position Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 Just a heads up, 404 is not found, 403 is forbidden..lol, but yeah, IT roadblocks always have forks in the road. I'd say before deploying the laptops after receiving them, maybe try driver roll backs on devices that are having trouble, and from there, do your updates and upgrade of anything. If you find out what specifically is corrupt and present it to corp, that also might help you in the long run if you also know a fix, just don't do anything that gets you in trouble as digininja said, not worth losing a job over, but if you can troubleshoot and fix the issues, send them a patch or fix or info on what the problem is, I think that will get you more points than trying to sidestep locked down images before and patching them before they ship to you. Let them do the patching, you just give them the info on whats broken if you can find it, and who knows, maybe they'll move you up if the other interview doesn't work out, you might score points with current work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bountyhunter50 Posted December 9, 2013 Author Share Posted December 9, 2013 Just a heads up, 404 is not found, 403 is forbidden..lol Not even some sort of brownie points for effort? lol But here is basically the latest: The image itself is no longer corrupt (finally) but after getting every last driver updated (both windows and 3rd party) I discovered the infamous Flickering screen! *DUN Dun dunnnn... Im wanting to play with the graphics drivers a bit more, Like how digip said with rollbacking the drivers to see if that helps. however I think corporate will need to replace all our brand new units since this is on every one of them. I'm laughing painfully inside... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
no42 Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 (edited) If your Windows based, you probably want to read up on "Windows Sysprep". Handy; but sometimes it can drive you mad... Failing the Sysprep process, my second option is to use imaging software & boot cd like Acronis True Image (build 1x working image to build them all) It is how I've maintained corporate images in the past. Edited December 9, 2013 by midnitesnake Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awskier08 Posted December 24, 2013 Share Posted December 24, 2013 There are programs to view GHO files out there. its not pretty, but it can be done. So once the bios comes up, then the GAG loader comes up behind that, then windows? probably something with the boot.ini maybe? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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