Windows won't reboot after Norton Ghost

**quattroman** · January 29th, 2008, 04:09 PM

Hey....
I am using a Laptop, one day old...trying to make a back up of original setup I get into this, and now I can't do anything.
Also the laptop uses SATA drive and no floppy drive.

I tried what iamnobody said
and when doing
example:gdisk 2 /act /p:x /i (set partition x on disk 2 active (your Windows partition))

Actual: gdisk 2 /act /p:2 /i

I get
GDISK (W) Fixed disk 1 has overlapping drives
GDISK (E) No Such fixed disk -- 2

**NooNoo** · January 29th, 2008, 04:30 PM

Welcome to windrivers quattroman

overlapping drives means that you have one drive starting before the last one finished... this is not good

This is a laptop and probably has a recovery partition which you really don't want to delete.

**quattroman** · January 29th, 2008, 04:39 PM

I erase the virtual partition....

now Missing OS...

I need the Vista Home Premium DVD...anybody got the DVD....

The laptop is a day old. So might try taking it back to Best Buy if I can't get the DVD by tonight

**quattroman** · January 29th, 2008, 04:42 PM

I erased the Virtual partition...
Now I need to rebuild all the boot sectors...but I need vista home premium dvd, which I don't have...do you have a place to download it from?

**NooNoo** · January 29th, 2008, 05:32 PM

No. You should phone your laptop vendor and ask for the media to be sent to you.

**mrpos** · March 6th, 2008, 04:44 PM

Originally Posted by atilaw

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 doesn't have any other bootable disks like win98, or a floopy drive (like me) just downloading this cd image.

I have tried all of the solutions above without success. When I use Gparted, as a boot menu, these are the results. If I boot to MBR, I get a flashing cursor (Ghost Partition). If I boot to Partition 1, I get XP, If I boot to Partition 2, I get HP Recovery. "Gparted live" shows 3 partitions. The Ghost partition shows up greyed out, and does not allow me to delete it. The XP partition is shown as active.
Gdisk says that partition 1 is active but my partition exceeds the disk size!!

**NooNoo** · March 7th, 2008, 05:06 AM

Welcome to Windrivers Mrpos

I am a tad confused. Why is the mBR the ghost partition?

**mrpos** · March 7th, 2008, 12:45 PM

Indeed! That is a part of the problem.

**NooNoo** · March 7th, 2008, 04:11 PM

Perhaps you should explain exactly what you did...

**VitaminD** · June 20th, 2008, 11:19 AM

Originally Posted by quattroman

Hey....
I am using a Laptop, one day old...trying to make a back up of original setup I get into this, and now I can't do anything.
Also the laptop uses SATA drive and no floppy drive.

I tried what iamnobody said
and when doing
example:gdisk 2 /act /p:x /i (set partition x on disk 2 active (your Windows partition))

Actual: gdisk 2 /act /p:2 /i

I get
GDISK (W) Fixed disk 1 has overlapping drives
GDISK (E) No Such fixed disk -- 2

Ok here was my scenario and I'll state what I did to resolve the issue.

I was actually testing out this software to give out to someone because I didn't know exactly how to make a Ghost Bootable disc with OS and all on the disc. I used Acronis in the past and that requires you to create an acronis boot disc. Generally, that works flawlessly, but we wanted to get rid of the extra boot disc and create a disc that just has the OS/drivers and all. This would make distribution easy--obviously. I knew Ghost did it, I just didn't know how.

So...to the meat and potatoes...
I installed Ghost
Went through the wizard step by step

Now I want to make mention of a few things before I continue---
1: I am running Windows Vista x64 business--it told me that there are reported problems with this product and this edition of Windows. I figured, hell I'll continue and see where it takes me. If I hit the problems, I'll run from there.
2: I did this on my main box--Very foolish. I was stupid enough to do this and realized the mistake afterward. Live and learn.

Anyways, after going through the wizard, step, it prompts me that the machine will restart to start the ghosting process. I hit ok and it starts.

When it starts PC DOS, it gives me the options of going to the Ghost or restarting to Windows. When going to ghost it lags and does nothing but gives me a blinking cursor.
When attempting to go to Windows, it does the same.
I read the bottom of the screen and it gave me the option to bypass the startup files by hitting F5. I hit F5 and it gives me the options to go into Ghost, go to windows, or exit to DOS prompt. I exited to DOS. From here I typed Dir and it gave me the directory for the files in the "GHOST" directory. I then started using the gdisk command utility.
When using this utility, behind every command you have to put "/i".
Example: gdisk 1 /status /i
If you don't, it will just sit there.
Here's what I did:

gdisk 1 /status /i

gdisk 1 /act /p:x<--this is the numbered partition/drive you want active

Once this is done, restart your machine and you will be able to boot into Windows.

Symantec has the information on their website
Here's the link:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...nsf&view=docid
I didn't delete the partition however, I just made my partition active. Once I was able to boot back into Vista, I removed Norton Ghost 2003. It's just not for Vista, there is a Vista solution--I just need to grab that.

Hope this helps and if I have made any mistakes or something misleading, please let me know. I will gladly duplicate this problem and see what steps I missed.

--Thanks!
Vitamin D

**Buddah** · September 4th, 2008, 11:40 AM

Hi, Well am also having the same problem in starting windows after trying to use ghost 2003 and all your tips on the boards seem to work on other devices like ide and sata but i have a problem with the Screen Printer in my work that runs windows 2000, and heres the problem since my harddrive is a scsi and ghost deactivited my partition and made a virtual drive it also wont read my driver for host-non raid, so when i try and use gdisk or any other method it doesnt show my drive no more.... I have tried installing and copying the drivers from floppy and editing the config.sys file but still doesnt work am i doing something wrong?

Thanks for any help on the subject...

**NooNoo** · September 25th, 2008, 08:17 AM

Welcome to Windrivers Buddah
Sorry you haven't had a reply till now, have you still got the problem or did you solve it?

**alanegreen** · November 2nd, 2008, 10:38 AM

I've had exactly this problem - none of the Norton based suggestions above worked. I used Fdisk to view the partitions on my boot drive, and trhen used it to activate my windows partition. This allowed my PC to boot to windows. After this was successful, I used Fdisk again to delete the DOS partition that Ghost had created.

Not sure whether you can still download Fdisk from the Microsoft site....

**NooNoo** · November 2nd, 2008, 10:46 AM

Welcome to Windrivers alanegreen
Ghost comes with GDisk which does everything Fdisk does and more, so you should have been able to do that with GDisk.

**Dialgr8** · November 26th, 2008, 01:37 PM

Originally Posted by VitaminD

Ok here was my scenario and I'll state what I did to resolve the issue.

I was actually testing out this software to give out to someone because I didn't know exactly how to make a Ghost Bootable disc with OS and all on the disc. I used Acronis in the past and that requires you to create an acronis boot disc. Generally, that works flawlessly, but we wanted to get rid of the extra boot disc and create a disc that just has the OS/drivers and all. This would make distribution easy--obviously. I knew Ghost did it, I just didn't know how.

So...to the meat and potatoes...
I installed Ghost
Went through the wizard step by step

Now I want to make mention of a few things before I continue---
1: I am running Windows Vista x64 business--it told me that there are reported problems with this product and this edition of Windows. I figured, hell I'll continue and see where it takes me. If I hit the problems, I'll run from there.
2: I did this on my main box--Very foolish. I was stupid enough to do this and realized the mistake afterward. Live and learn.

Anyways, after going through the wizard, step, it prompts me that the machine will restart to start the ghosting process. I hit ok and it starts.

When it starts PC DOS, it gives me the options of going to the Ghost or restarting to Windows. When going to ghost it lags and does nothing but gives me a blinking cursor.
When attempting to go to Windows, it does the same.
I read the bottom of the screen and it gave me the option to bypass the startup files by hitting F5. I hit F5 and it gives me the options to go into Ghost, go to windows, or exit to DOS prompt. I exited to DOS. From here I typed Dir and it gave me the directory for the files in the "GHOST" directory. I then started using the gdisk command utility.
When using this utility, behind every command you have to put "/i".
Example: gdisk 1 /status /i
If you don't, it will just sit there.
Here's what I did:

gdisk 1 /status /i

gdisk 1 /act /p:x<--this is the numbered partition/drive you want active

Once this is done, restart your machine and you will be able to boot into Windows.

Symantec has the information on their website
Here's the link:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...nsf&view=docid
I didn't delete the partition however, I just made my partition active. Once I was able to boot back into Vista, I removed Norton Ghost 2003. It's just not for Vista, there is a Vista solution--I just need to grab that.

Hope this helps and if I have made any mistakes or something misleading, please let me know. I will gladly duplicate this problem and see what steps I missed.

--Thanks!
Vitamin D

Problem Solved !!!! U R the best !!!!