Windows won't reboot after Norton Ghost
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Thread: Windows won't reboot after Norton Ghost

  1. #1
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    Angry Windows won't reboot after Norton Ghost

    I just ran Norton Ghost (Norton Systemworks 2003) on my WinXP Pro machine and now it won't reboot to Windows. It keeps booting to PC-DOS 7.1 and it will not return to Windows despite selecting that option on the boot menu. I've tried GhReboot.exe but after executing the program, the cursor just sits there and nothing happens. I've tried to execute GDISK.EXE also to manually restore the Windows partition and make it active, but it does the same thing with the cursor. Did Ghost mess up my hard drive (SATA type)?

    Is there ANY way to manually recover the partition and make it active again? My last backup was about 3 weeks ago and I hate to lose what's been added since then. Thanks very much!

  2. #2
    Registered User silencio's Avatar
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    Where did you copy the image to?
    Deliver me from Swedish furniture!

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    Quote Originally Posted by silencio
    Where did you copy the image to?
    I don't think it even began to copy the image. Besides, it was not a copy of the C: drive image but a USB device media that I was trying to copy to CD, however after Windows shut down and rebooted, it booted into PC-DOS 7.1, then loaded a GUI that I presume would've showed the progress of the copy, but it didn't progress anywhere. An hourglass cursor was in the middle of the screen, but moving my mouse did nothing for it and after a few keypresses (ESC, etc.) the internal speaker just sounded a steady beep. Powering down was the only option at that point. Rebooting again took me to DOS and I had a choice to RETRY or Reboot to Windows. Rebooting to Windows did nothing, just a locked up machine.

    Symantec says to run GhReboot.exe, which I did, but it just sits there with a blinking cursor. Running Gdisk.exe also results the same. What Ghost supposedly does is hide my Windows partition and creates it's own partition (of about 4Mb) which is where I'm booting from, it's "virtual drive". Anyway, supposedly all I'd need to do is to hide or delete Ghost's partition and make my hidden inactive Windows partition active again and all should be well (unless GHOST screwed it all up and the partition is no longer recognizable... so much for using aftermarket utilities.)

  4. #4
    Driver Terrier NooNoo's Avatar
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    pull the drive, put it in another xp/2k machine, can you see the data ok?
    Never, ever approach a computer saying or even thinking "I will just do this quickly."

  5. #5
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    SATA causing problem

    I realize that this does not resolve your problem, but some of the information you left helped me to resolve mine.

    I have a ASUS P4P400-E motherboard. I am currently using 2 optical drives and 2 ata drives on the main controller, 1 160 GB SATA drive, and 2 80 GB ATA drives on the promise raid controller. My primary boot partition is a on the Primary Master, and after getting Windows XP Pro to where I wanted, I tried to GHOST 2003 the drive. I experienced the same halting on the cursor or hour glass. Despite bypassing startuup (F5) and running GHREBOOT.EXE, I still could not get in. It would just halt.

    After reading some of these threads, and noticing that they all had the keyword SATA in them, I decided to uplug my SATA drive. This fixed the problem, and it created the image and then booted successfully. It seems that GHOST 2003 has issues with SATA.

  6. #6
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    I had the same problem just this past week. Get a hold of a bootable floppy and copy ghreboot.exe to it. Boot from the floppy and run ghreboot.exe.

    That should get you back into Windows. It WILL NOT work if you run ghreboot.exe from the virtual partition that Ghost creates. You MUST run it from a bootable floppy.

    I hope that helps you

  7. #7
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    Hi

    This usually occurs, when you boot into Virtual Partition from Ghost, That partition is made active to work. Due to some reasons may be your BIOS is not compatible with PC-DOS, Windows or Norton Ghost cannot again make your Primary partition active again thus when you restart you end up in a loop.

    To correct this you can use GhReboot. But many times this fails too.

    For a correct solution check this Symantec link:

    http://service1.symantec.com/support...02092510522725

    Hope this helps.

  8. #8
    Driver Terrier NooNoo's Avatar
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    Nice tip NetBizz and Welcome to Windrivers!
    Never, ever approach a computer saying or even thinking "I will just do this quickly."

  9. #9
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    Thank you NooNoo,

    Let me know if you want know more about Norton Ghost 2003 or 9.0

  10. #10
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    I found this thread searching for a solution to this problem. On an XP system with all SATA drives and one USB be external drive, I tried to use Ghost 2003 to backup a the USB drive to a GHO file set. When the system booted into ghost it hung up on an IoMega driver.

    Rebooting brought back to PC dos only to hang up again. The Ghreboot utility hung as well.

    Final solution was to boot a Win98 startup floppy disk and use Fdisk to set the NTFS partition containing windows to active (thus deactvating the the Ghost partition). Then XP starting booting again as it was supposed to.

    While this solution seems so nice and elegant, it took me a full day to arrive at it, so I help this suggestion can save some one else save some time.

    As handy as Ghost 2003 is, it looks like it is showing it's age. To bad it is effectively discontinued.

    Thanx for the prior posting help, It did lead me in the right direction.

    Jim Jones

  11. #11
    Driver Terrier NooNoo's Avatar
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    Welcome to Windrivers JimJones

    Thanks for that fix. If you need any other help, please post!
    Never, ever approach a computer saying or even thinking "I will just do this quickly."

  12. #12
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    Simple to fix

    When you use Ghost in this manner it creates a virtual partition and sets the vPartition as the bootable drive. Download a tool called Ranish. http://www.ranish.com/part/ Download the Partition Manager 2.37. create a diskette and run the disk at bootup.

    You will see two partitions. the first is your normal drive the second starting with v is the virtual partition. using the arrow keys select the first and press the "B" key. You will notice that the > beside the Vpart has moved in front of your normal part making it bootable. Select F2 to save the change and reboot. all is fixed. please note that you will see the partitions in red and you will get warnings. This is caused by the vPart actually being part of the original part and yes they do over lap. Just ignore.

    Regards
    Kaiana -MCDST

  13. #13
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    thanks for the tips on how norton is managing to freeze when booting... using that info I just downloaded the bootable open-source ISO image of Gparted live, and selected the option on the first menu "Boot from Partition 1 on the first drive"..... sorted!

    Using the same disk you can delete the annoying ghost partition too... it's basically a better version of partition magic, that is built by the open source community. GUI based too... anybody who doesnt have any other bootable disks like win98, or a floopy drive (like me) just downloading this cd image.

  14. #14
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    gdisk with /i switch will help

    I don't know if any one needs this info any more but here it goes.

    On my computer, Ghost 2003 have problem with the IDE controller (SATA drives).
    If your computer freezes before Ghost can completly load up then try this:
    To Run Ghost.exe - Boot up to DOS (not Windows) and type "Ghost.exe /noide" in Ghost directory. (/noide disable the ide controller)
    If you are stuck in Virtual Mode then you will need to use gdisk.exe to set Window partition to active state and then delete the virtual partition.
    Add "/i" to the end of every gdisk command and it should work.
    exemple: gdisk /status /i (show status of all hard drive)
    exemple: gdisk 2 /status /i (show status of disk 2)
    exemple: gdisk 2 /act /p:x /i (set partition x on disk 2 active (your Windows partition))
    exemple: gdisk 2 /del /p:y /i (delete partion y on disk 2 (your virtual partition))

  15. #15
    Driver Terrier NooNoo's Avatar
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    Welcome to Windrivers iamnobody and thanks for the tip.
    Never, ever approach a computer saying or even thinking "I will just do this quickly."

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