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!

Where did you copy the image to?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by silencio

Where did you copy the image to?

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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.)

pull the drive, put it in another xp/2k machine, can you see the data ok?

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.

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

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.

Nice tip NetBizz and Welcome to Windrivers!

Thank you NooNoo,

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

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

Welcome to Windrivers JimJones

Thanks for that fix. If you need any other help, please post!

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

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.

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))

Welcome to Windrivers iamnobody and thanks for the tip.

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

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.

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

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?

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

Quote:

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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.

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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!!

Welcome to Windrivers Mrpos

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

Indeed! That is a part of the problem.

Perhaps you should explain exactly what you did...

Quote:

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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

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...

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

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....

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.

Quote:

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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

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:) :) Problem Solved !!!! U R the best !!!!

I also use ghost -fni
Disables direct IDE access support for IDE hard disk operations. Which seems to work great for IDE to sata or sata to sata ghosting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KAIANA

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.

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I had Ranish 2.4.0 on an "ultimate boot cd" I had burnt. Believe me, I had tried every trick on Symantec KB, been to countless forums and got no luck.

Your Ranish tip did it for me-many many thanks mate. :thumbs:

Just to confirm the easiest solution on thie thread , by Brandon. I have a ATA and SATA drives on my Dell SC400 with winXP OS. On an attempt to copy the C drive to a new drive, I too got into the constant boot to PC dos and unable to recover by selecting the return to windows option or any of the tools. Ghdisk also hangs.
Anyway, disconnecting the SATA drive, and rebooting caused it to proceed. In my case I didn't want to take chances with my data today, so I was simply happy when the option to Cancel and return to Windows let it complete and return me to the beautiful Loading Windows XP screen.

BTW, at work they have the latest version of Ghost, I think its 11 or so, that works well even with Win 7 / Win Server 2008 R2. Its time to dump Ghost 2003.

"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)"

This command isn't working for me. I put it Ghost.exe/ noide (/noide disable the ide controller)

I tried a few different variations of that. How are you actually typing this?
Thanks.

The space would go before the slash, not after:

ghost.exe /noide

You also apparently need to be in the Ghost directory before typing that command. So try:

cd \ghost

Jim Jones,

Thanks for the Win98 start up disk recommendation. It worked and bailed me out of a gery sticky situation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JimJones

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

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