Is anyone else having problems testing or recovering with the new version (Ghost 10) recovery CD?  I can create images under XP Ghost 10 just fine to a WD 250gb drive which is in a Bytecc external USB2 enclosure.  However when I boot Ghost 10 from their recovery CD, it does NOT recognize the USB2 drive--hence I can't reover anything.

I have tested with a different Western Digital External USB2 drive (both enclosure and drive by WD).  With that one everything is recognized and restores fine.

Also, BOTH externals work fine with Ghost 9, so I doubt it is "a user problem".

I've spent several weeks with "live" support followed by email support.  No resolution except "try this", "run this", "report back on this", etc.

I found this thread that seems to show others having similar problems:

http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6142-0.html?forumID=31&threadID=129743&start=0

Am I alone here?

John. wrote on Nov 12^th, 2005 at 5:36pm:

"... to a WD 250gb drive which is in a Bytecc external USB2 enclosure.  However when I boot Ghost 10 from their recovery CD, it does NOT recognize the USB2 drive--hence I can't recover anything..."

I know almost nothing about Ghost 9 - and even less about Ghost 10 - but I do have extensive experience with external enclosure kits employing USB 1.1, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and SATA 150 with DOS-based Norton Ghost 2003.

The Ali M5621 device controller in my Bytecc ME-320U2 is totally hostile to the Norton/Iomega USB 2.0 software associated with Ghost 2003, but NightOwl's Panasonic Universal USB Driver routine remedies that incompatibility.

EP :'(

I have the Bytecc ME 350U2 enclosure which has the Prolific PL-2507 chipset in it.

There is a F6 for additional drivers during the XP PRE-enviornment boot (for scsi).

Are there drivers for these chipsets that function in the pre-xp environment?

John. wrote on Nov 12^th, 2005 at 8:35pm:

"... the Bytecc ME 350U2 enclosure has the Prolific PL-2507 chipset in it..."

Hmm, yet another chipset.  Be advised that we substitute Panasonic USB 2.0 drivers for Norton/Iomega drivers in the config.sys file for employment during bootup into the DOS-based mode of Norton Ghost 2003.  Since I am assuming that you are working totally within Windows XP, I am indeed at a loss.

Nonetheless, it might not hurt to peek at this thread if you are interested in downloading the two drivers alluded to:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1124904959;start=16#16

EP :'(

Thanks.  I just tried those 2 .sys files on a diskette with F6 without success.

Ghost 9 and Ghost 10 come with a self contained boot CD that boots into an XP-like environment (similar to booting from the Microsoft boot cd).

Ghost 9 boot cd recognizes both external hard drives fine.  Ghost 10 only recognizes one of them.

I solved the problem (unfortunately without any help from Symantec):

1) There is a bug in the Norton Ghost 10 software and 2) an undocumented restriction in the manual.

1) My external USB2 hard drive which contains the Ghost Images is assigned drive letter z:.  The Ghost 10 Recovery boot CD uses z: as the drive letter for the ms-ramdrive ( z: ) boot process and apparently will not recognize any drive assigned with the same drive letter!

Note:  There was no error message to that effect!

2) There is no documentation in the user manual that I'm aware of that points out restricted drive letters.  There are 3 I believe from looking at the recovery environment:

z: ms-ramdrive
s: cd-rom
x: nortonghost10.0

I found out about the Ghost error through extensive testing of my own.

As soon as I used the XP device manager to change the drive letter of the external USB2 hard drive from z: to k:, the recovery cd boot process worked perfectly!

Hopefully Symantec will publish this restriction and also put an error message in the boot cd software program.

John. wrote on Nov 16^th, 2005 at 1:07am:

"... My external USB2 hard drive which contains the Ghost Images is assigned drive letter z:.  The Ghost 10 Recovery boot CD uses z: as the drive letter for the ms-ramdrive ( z: ) boot process and apparently will not recognize any drive assigned with the same drive letter! Note:  There was no error message to that effect! 2) There is no documentation in the user manual that I'm aware of that points out restricted drive letters.  There are 3 I believe from looking at the recovery environment: z: ms-ramdrive s: cd-rom x: nortonghost10.0 I found out about the Ghost error through extensive testing of my own..."

I have a factory-installed 250 MB Iomega IDE ZIP drive on a Dell Dimension 8100 that I decided to redesignate from the default letter D: to drive letter Z: (for ZIP) in order to respectively have each pair of optical drives on my four desktop PCs enjoy uniform designations.

The notion of a software package having restrictions on drive letters never crossed my mind, so I am granting this thread a "sticky" with the hope of eliciting further comment along these lines.

EP :'(

Ghost4me, have you notified Symantec about your discovery of restricted drive letters with Ghost 10.0?  If accurate, Symantec ought to create a Knowledge Base article on this subject for the benefit of all.

Pleonasm wrote on Nov 16^th, 2005 at 2:04pm:

Ghost4me, have you notified Symantec about your discovery of restricted drive letters with Ghost 10.0?  If accurate, Symantec ought to create a Knowledge Base article on this subject for the benefit of all.

Yes.  I originally opened the problem over a month ago with Symantec LiveChat; then they gave up and referred me to email support.  I jumped through number of hoops, sent this, answered same questions several times.  My last correspondence from them said that their development team was "looking at it".

Yesterday after I resolved the issue, I sent a lengthly email and requested that they add an error message to the Ghost startup process, and secondly add it to their knowledge base and to the readme.txt.  So far I haven't heard back.

Note, this did NOT occur with Ghost 9 Recovery CD, only Ghost 10.

I didn't realize the assigned drive letter was stored on the disk drive, but maybe that is just NTFS formatted drives.

Thanks to this forum for all the info and advice here.  It's the only active Symantec user-to-user support forum I'm aware of.  I don't know how you publicize your existence, but I'm sure there are many others needing help and not knowing about Radified Forums!
:)

Ghost4me, I too have looked in both the Norton Ghost 10.0 User’s Guide and the ReadMe file, and see no discussion of restricted drive letters.

I consider this primarily a documentation problem rather than a program ‘bug’, since the application reasonably needs to use some drive letters for its own functionality.  However, these restrictions should be clearly noted in the User’s Guide.

Pleonasm wrote on Nov 16^th, 2005 at 2:49pm:

Ghost4me, I too have looked in both the Norton Ghost 10.0 User’s Guide and the ReadMe file, and see no discussion of restricted drive letters. I consider this primarily a documentation problem rather than a program ‘bug’, since the application reasonably needs to use some drive letters for its own functionality.  However, these restrictions should be clearly noted in the User’s Guide.

I would maybe agree that technically it is not a bug.  So I would call it a "design deficiency".  Yes, it's working the way it was designed (although Ghost 9 does NOT have this design deficiency).

The problem is that when a user is at the disaster recovery level trying to do a bare bones restore, it's too late to say "read the manual" and say "please go back into XP and assign a different drive letter for your backup image on the external USB2 drive."

A better system/programming design that I would suggest is for Symantec to have the Ghost 10 recovery cd environment just IGNORE the drive letter of the USB external and use what is available to their startup environment.

El_Pescador wrote on Nov 16^th, 2005 at 1:52pm:

"... so I am granting this thread a "sticky" with the hope of eliciting further comment along these lines...

'Unsticky!'

EP :'(

Ghost4me,

The Ghost 9 RE doesn't assign the same drive letters as WinXP does.
Ghost 10 RE assigns the same drive letters as WinXP. For hard drives but not for optical drives.

I only plug my external HD in occasionally and it uses G: and H: drives. My optical drives are Y: and Z: (master and slave).  When I boot to Ghost 10 RE without the external HD connected, G: and H: aren't used but my slave optical drive becomes I:   My master optical drive (containing the Ghost CD) is X: as you have noted.

So there is no problem with an optical drive being Z: drive in WinXP but a big problem if the external HD is Z: in WinXP.

I agree. It should have been mentioned in the userguide.

'Re-sticky!'

EP :'(

Brian wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2005 at 7:51am:

Ghost4me, The Ghost 9 RE doesn't assign the same drive letters as WinXP does. Ghost 10 RE assigns the same drive letters as WinXP. For hard drives but not for optical drives. I only plug my external HD in occasionally and it uses G: and H: drives. My optical drives are Y: and Z: (master and slave).  When I boot to Ghost 10 RE without the external HD connected, G: and H: aren't used but my slave optical drive becomes I:   My master optical drive (containing the Ghost CD) is X: as you have noted. So there is no problem with an optical drive being Z: drive in WinXP but a big problem if the external HD is Z: in WinXP. I agree. It should have been mentioned in the userguide.

I agree that the Ghost 9 Recovery Environment software that Symantec uses is different than Ghost 10.  I suggested to Symantec tech support they drop hard-coding the external drive letters in G10, but no response yet.

It apparently is NOT just z: that is restricted.  See this thread:

http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-7813-0.html?forumID=31&threadID=129743&messageID=1543032

It appear that anything *may* conflict with the new Ghost 10 RE!@

I did some tests with the Ghost 10 RE.

My HD partitions are C, D, E, F, N and P. These drive letters are the same in Windows and the RE. When I connect my USB external HD Windows assigns G and H to the two partitions. G and H are seen in the RE as well. Now it gets interesting.

With the external HD absent I plugged in a USB card reader. Drive letters assigned were G, H, I and J. In the RE the card reader drive letters were I, J, K and L. There was no G or H. The slave CD drive was M.

Rebooted to Windows and the card reader was again G, H, I and J. I plugged in the USB external HD and it was assigned K and L.

Booted to the RE and the card reader was still I, J, K and L but the external HD wasn’t seen at all. There was no G or H. CD drive was O.

Booted to Windows and the card reader drive letters were G, H, I and J and the external HD was K and L. As before.

I removed the card reader, rebooted and the USB external HD was still K and L.

Booted to RE and the USB external HD wasn’t seen at all. CD drive was K.

Booted to Windows and the USB external HD was still K and L. Removed the USB external HD and shut down computer. Booted to Windows and connected the USB external HD which was still K and L.

Booted to RE and the USB external HD was still not seen. CD drive was K. I tried a different USB slot with the same result.

Booted to Ghost 9 RE and the drive letters were all over the place, as expected, but the USB external HD was seen.

Booted to Windows and in Disk Management I changed K and L back to G and H, the original USB external HD drive letters before the card reader was plugged in.

Booted to Ghost 10 RE and the USB external HD was seen as G and H.

In summary the Ghost 10 RE has a MAJOR problem. The card reader broke the drive letter assignment for the USB external HD and if I had wanted to restore an image from the USB external HD to a corrupted WinXP partition it would have been impossible with Ghost 10 RE.

These findings need to be confirmed.

Wow, what a test.

My understanding is that an assigned drive letter is present in the hard drive.  I'm not sure if it's in the first sector, or some place in the NTFS record.  But, if it is present, all hell can break loose.

If the hard drive has never had an explicity drive letter assigned, Ghost 10 CD Recovery Enviornment seems to work fine.  But if it HAS, as you point out, beware.

I even had my internal IDE logical partitions not be completely recognized when I had my external HD powered on using drive letter z: during the CD boot.  If powered off, the logical drives in the extended partition were recognized correctly.

I think if one could "patch" or remove that drive assignment, everything would work.

However, the BIGGER problem is that this is really a Symantec software bug, and NOT just a documentation problem.

No one is going to be constantly testing his recovery CD to make sure it still works.  Re-assigning drive letters for USB key devices, etc etc are common.

Symantec needs to fix the bug.  One can't wait for a hardware disaster and then try to boot the RE CD to find out it is "not in compliance".

Brian

Hmmm...interesting!  My brain is *bursting* trying to follow the sequence of events--and my eyes are watering starring at the monitor wonder *What!*.

(I just noticed--brain--brian!  :D )

Fixing Windows 2000/XP Drive Letters

WinXP remembers drive letters by storing the partition ID in the registry.  Ghost's Recovery Disk is booting from a CD and does not have a *memory* of the drive letter assignments--it creates a *temp* registry, so it would have to re-detect and assign drive letters on each boot--unless.....

Ghost 2003 asks to *ID* any new HDD that is finds that isn't *marked* when it loads.  I wonder if Ghost 10 is placing some kind of unique ID on the HDD's it's finding--but USB has to screw things up, because your card reader can't retain an ID unless you put memory sticks in it and leave them there!  

Also, if a HDD is not left hooked up to the system, WinXP *may* consider the partitions *abandoned* and may re-assign drive letters to newly seen partitions.

Would be interesting if *Kawecki's Trick* would cause Ghost 10's Recovery Environment to re-detect and re-assign drive letters if applied after you have created the loss of recognizing the USB external HDD:

Kawecki's Trick

NightOwl wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2005 at 12:09am:

WinXP remembers drive letters by storing the partition ID in the registry.  Ghost's Recovery Disk is booting from a CD and does not have a *memory* of the drive letter assignments--it creates a *temp* registry, so it would have to re-detect and assign drive letters on each boot--unless.....

The Ghost 10 bug must be that it reads the DiskID (as mentioned in the link) and can't handle a situation where the drive letter conflicts with one that Ghost 10 has already used for itself.

I have one external HD which I have never hard-assigned a drive letter.  That one always works in Ghost 10.

The other external HD I had hard-assigned it to z: and that one never worked with Ghost 10 Recovery CD boot until I hard-assigned it to k: which evidently doesn't conflict with Ghost 10 (all my other drive letters for usb keys and usb drives are lower).

I spent several hours with Symantec "live chat" support, then weeks and weeks of trying to convince them it wasn't MY problem.  After I finally solved it for them and told them, the best I have gotten back so far is "...I'll send the info to the development team to include in a knowledge base article"--of course that does nothing to fix the problem.

(sorry for the soapbox...I'd just like to talk to someone knowledgeable occasionally in tech support instead of being filtered by some level 1 1/2 person sending my emails to someone else.)

It's a good soapbox. I can't see a resolution other than Symantec issuing a CD that works. Like a car recall.

NightOwl, thanks for your kind words. I'd be interested in what Kawecki's Trick does in this situation but I'm drive lettered out.

Good work award to Ghost4me for providing the explanation of this Recovery Environment anomaly.

Rad checking in. We have identified a bug with the Ghost 10 Recovery CD? Can somebody provide short concise description? Should the guide be updated to include a link to this thread?

R.

Brian wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2005 at 12:48am:

It's a good soapbox. I can't see a resolution other than Symantec issuing a CD that works. Like a car recall.

Has anyone else opened a problem report with Symantec/Ghost 10?  

They kept inferring "you're the only one having this problem..." and they haven't really acknowledged it's a software bug, just they will "look" at publishing a knowledge base article.  So I'm not sure if they have accepted that they have a problem yet (they need to go to a 12 step program and THIS is the first step...accepting  :)  )

Ghost4me and Brian

I had to go back and read more carefully the previous posts--I had forgotten about Ghost4me's original issue when I saw Brian's test results--the two issues may or may not be the same issue--certainly related in that they both involve USB external HDD's--but, the actual issues may be different.

Ghost4me's problem appears to be a conflict of drive letter assignments:

From what you have reported, it sure looks like Ghost 10 is somehow *marking* the external USB HDD's with a marker to hold it's drive letter assignment when booting using the *Recovery Disk's* *Recovery Environment*.

*Marking* the HDD's so the Recovery Environment uses the same drive letter assignment would have to be taking place initially from within the WinXP's Ghost 10.x interface.

What I can't fathom, is how can Symantec create a Recovery Environment that specifies certain drive letters for it's boot up and functioning--and not check the drive letter assignments in WinXP when *marking* the HDD's with their future *Recovery Environment* drive letter assignments for conflicts?!

Whereas, Brian's problem seems to be related to Ghost 10's *Recovery Environment* loosing track of drive letter assignments when different USB devices are switched and changed--becoming so confused that it is unable to correctly *see* the HDD at all!

Ghost4me--this is an interesting observation:


Quote:

I have one external HD which I have never hard-assigned a drive letter.  That one always works in Ghost 10.

What exactly is the difference between you specifying the HDD drive letter vs WinXP specifying the HDD drive letter assignments--the HDD has specified drive letters assigned in Windows regardless of whether it's changed manually by the user or not--there must be something *different* about how a drive letter is *remembered* if the user assigns the drive letter vs the OS assigns the drive letter--and Ghost 10.x must handle that information differently--based on your above observation!

Re: "they need to go to a 12 step program and..."

that was worth a good laugh.

software manufacturers, it's been my experience, are experts in denial.

NightOwl, this quote from Ghost4me's url suggests Kawecki's Trick might work, although deleting the C: drive is a radical way to change the partition table.


Quote:

I too have a problem with Ghost 10 recovery CD not seeing drives. I have tried booting the CD on two different systems and it fails on both of them, whereas Ghost 9.0 works fine. I have found that if I choose 'View partitions' in the Utilities menu all the drives are shown with no problems. It's the tree-view that is the problem - it doesn't show all the drives. However, If I boot from a floppy (remember them?) and use fdisk or pqmagic to delete the C: drive partition I can then boot from the Ghost 10 CD and all drives are shown and I can browse for my recovery points and restore the system.

NightOwl wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2005 at 2:01pm:

From what you have reported, it sure looks like Ghost 10 is somehow *marking* the external USB HDD's with a marker to hold it's drive letter assignment when booting using the *Recovery Disk's* *Recovery Environment*. What exactly is the difference between you specifying the HDD drive letter vs WinXP specifying the HDD drive letter assignments--the HDD has specified drive letters assigned in Windows regardless of whether it's changed manually by the user or not--there must be something *different* about how a drive letter is *remembered* if the user assigns the drive letter vs the OS assigns the drive letter--and Ghost 10.x must handle that information differently--based on your above observation!

I'm no expert, but from what I have read, Windows XP stores the hard-coded drive letter in the DiskID field of the mbr--if the user did that by using the disk manager assign drive letter option.

When the Ghost 10 Recovery CD environment is established, it is in essence a Windows XP boot from the cd.  Ghost 10 discovers that a hard drive has the letter z: and HICKUPS because Ghost plans to use that one.

The reason I never had problems with my other external HD is that I had NEVER ever assigned it a drive letter manually--I just let xp pick the next available, which in my case was j:

When I booted Ghost 10 RE CD, I remember that it wasn't j: anymore but some other letter, but at least I could open the backup images.

Search Google for mbr DiskID and fixmbr.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_map.mspx

1. Boot to the Recovery Console
2. Map command to get device id
3. fixmbr /device... to reset/clear mbr

Of course all this is speculation and could be dangerous.

My own approach was just to use the XP disk manager reset my z: external HD to k: which was low in the alphabet.

Bottom line:  we shouldn't have to be doing any of this because Ghost 10 should work around drive letters like Ghost 9 did.  They should fix their software!

I am having exactly the same problem. Ghost 9 saw my external usb drive just fine. Ghost 10 does not. I wrote tech support a week ago. No response. If htey don't answer by Monday, I'm going to return it to Symantec for a refund and reinstall ghost 9 which works just fine.

wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2005 at 11:45pm:

I am having exactly the same problem. Ghost 9 saw my external usb drive just fine. Ghost 10 does not. I wrote tech support a week ago. No response. If htey don't answer by Monday, I'm going to return it to Symantec for a refund and reinstall ghost 9 which works just fine.

Brad, the simpliest work around that seemed to work for me is this, in Windows XP:

1. Right click My Computer, then select Manage
2. Select Disk Management
3. Highlight your external USB disk drive, right click for properties and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths"
4. Change it to a low letter, such as e: or f: depending on what you have already used.
5. ok, etc.

Of course if you have programs installed on your external USB, their shortcuts and paths will have to be modified.

Please post back and let us know if that takes care of it, and what if anything Symantec says.  We all need a software fix from them.

Brad,

Can you tell us a little about your external HD? Which drive letter? Does it always have the same drive letter? Is it attached all the time?

I'm having the same problem with two external hard drives. They both, counter to others on this forum, have low letters. One is G and one is F. I've tried  booting into recover with them singly and together. Neither are recognized. I was toying with the idea that it might have something to do with the external drives being NTFS formatted instead of fat 32. Coincidentally, I ordered a larger new external recently. When it arrives, I 'll test it.

If this helps in terms of the rest of my configuration, its a Dell 8400, with two internal DVD burners. I've been noting that Ghost 10 is also not "seeing" the second DVD burner (E), but is seeing D .

wrote on Nov 24^th, 2005 at 12:13pm:

I'm having the same problem with two external hard drives. They both, counter to others on this forum, have low letters. One is G and one is F. I've tried  booting into recover with them singly and together. Neither are recognized. I was toying with the idea that it might have something to do with the external drives being NTFS formatted instead of fat 32. Coincidentally, I ordered a larger new external recently. When it arrives, I 'll test it. If this helps in terms of the rest of my configuration, its a Dell 8400, with two internal DVD burners. I've been noting that Ghost 10 is also not "seeing" the second DVD burner (E), but is seeing D .

Brad, thanks for the info.  All of my external hard drives are NTFS formatted.  After I reset the drive letter on mine, I powered my pc off, then also switched USB ports that the drive was plugged into just so it would have a different hub address.  Not sure if that made any difference.

The problem with using a FAT32 drive is that you are limited to 2 GB file sizes (I think that's the max).

Ah, I forgot that lat part about fat32 limits.

OK, so are folks saying that I should try to change the drive letters, even though they are low, change the usb connection, reboot, and see what happens?  

Brad

OK, here is what I tried. Net result, however, is no joy.

I renamed my dvd burners from D and E to M and N.
I renamed my USB drive from G to D
I changed its USB port.
I turned off all other external drives (flash reader)

I booted into the recover environment. It still won't "see" the bloody USB Drive.

I went back and changed everthing back the way it was, and muttered curses at Symantec for having me waste so much of my time, when version 9 works just fine.

Brad, my computer is a Dell 8400. I'm still using Ghost 9.

Is your other burner X: drive in the RE?

No. Per my post, my burners are D and E, although I tested M and N. Ghost 9 works fine. Stick with it. At this point, I intend to revert to it.

The CD/DVD drive containing the Ghost CD will be X: drive in the RE.

wrote on Nov 24^th, 2005 at 3:53pm:

No. Per my post, my burners are D and E, although I tested M and N. Ghost 9 works fine. Stick with it. At this point, I intend to revert to it.

If you already had Ghost 9, I agree--stick with it.  I don't really see any must-have new features in Ghost 10 over 9.  Mostly it is a GUI makeover and change of terminology to restore points.

Wait until Ghost 10.1 comes out!

I gave the demo version of Ghost 10 a good workover.

Brian wrote on Nov 24^th, 2005 at 4:16pm:

I gave the demo version of Ghost 10 a good workover.

Maybe there are some newer SATA or other drivers in the Recovery Environment, but with the Ghost 10 USB bug, it's hard to use Ghost 10 on anything except a very vanilla configuration, and that isn't even guaranteed to work.

The recovery point GUI appears to be related to GoBack which I'm not familiar with, but for total bare metal disaster protection, you don't need that.  It almost seems that Symantec is trying to make Ghost into something that it isn't.

Yes, Ghost 10 has drivers for my SATA HD's. Ghost 9 didn't but I found out how to add drivers to the CD.

In the Ghost 10 RE, Utilities, View Partition Information. Disk 3, the external HD is seen, but it doesn't have a drive letter.

Brian wrote on Nov 24^th, 2005 at 7:39pm:

In the Ghost 10 RE, Utilities, View Partition Information. Disk 3, the external HD is seen, but it doesn't have a drive letter.

I saw the same thing on mine initially.  That just confirms that the Windows XP Pre-Environment correctly identifies all our drives.  It's just that Ghost 10 can't handle it properly.

I saw another post in usenet with another unfortunate soul with same problem:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/browse_thread/thread/04f14e5f82ad7259/1a6b319dbdb74e53#1a6b319dbdb74e53

I suspect that it will be a very common problem if people start plugging in other USB devices as in my test. We have only heard from people who haven't done that. Remember, I could see my USB HD in Ghost 10 RE until I plugged in a card reader before plugging in the external HD. After that no amount of fiddling would allow the external HD to be seen (apart from Disk Management reassigning the original drive letter).

The Reatogo/Bart PE CD assigns drive letters similar to Ghost 9 so the pending Ghost 10 plugin should be useful. But that doesn't get Symantec off the hook. It's sad. Rad did offer our services as beta testers.

Brian, did you actually permanently add drivers to the CD, or do you just add them from a floppy via F6 when booting into the recovery environment. If the former, how did you do it. I'd love to be able to modify the ghost 9 CD so it has my SATA drivers already on it.

Brad, I used UltraISO. What is your controller? I may have other information.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1113183318

I suggest you also make a Reatogo/BartPE Ghost 9 CD. It will be the most useful CD that you own. You can easily add SATA and NIC drivers.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1119240262

Well, that is a good question. How do I find out what controller I'm using. I

Brad

Device Manager, IDE/ATA ATAPI Controllers. Or in Start, All Programs do you have Intel Application Accelerator?

What brand computer do you have?

I do have an Intel accelerator.

The controller is an INtel 82801FR SATA AHCI.

Its a Dell 8400.

By the way, I also determined that ghost 10 acts initially as if it has appropriate drivers for this this controller, but if I just use it for them I will get a blue screen of death during my boot on the rescue CD. If I use the floppy with the correct drivers, it boot normally.

I have revereted back go Ghost 9, and shipped back 10 to Symantec for a refund.

I must be dementing Brad. I'd forgotten we have the same computer. Then my txtsetup.sif edits apply to you.

John. wrote on Nov 24^th, 2005 at 9:34pm:

I saw the same thing on mine initially.  That just confirms that the Windows XP Pre-Environment correctly identifies all our drives.  It's just that Ghost 10 can't handle it properly. I saw another post in usenet with another unfortunate soul with same problem: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/browse_thread/thread/04f14e5f82ad7259/1a6b319dbdb74e53#1a6b319dbdb74e53

That's me! Thanks for leading me here! I'll repeat and update the text of my message:

I just installed Ghost 10 on my Dell Dimension (desktop) 9100 w/SATA RAID 1 (data mirror). I tried a backup from c: to a big USB hard drive, and that worked fine. Then I tried booting from the CD-ROM, which booted up okay and could access c:, except it couldn't "see" the USB drive. I rebooted with another brand of USB drive attached, Maxtor instead of Western Digital, and got same result. I tried again with a Lexar USB key to see whether I could access any USB directory device at all, and that was okay. I found two caveats in the doc, neither of which I violated: 1) USB device must be connected at boot time, and 2) Attach directly to PC and not to a hub. So I don't know why this wouldn't work, unless it involves some subtlety of the chipset or architecture of this model Dell. The Western Digital drive offers a dual connect option, USB or Firewire, so I tried the same test with the Firewire connection, and, Surprise!, it worked. So I've got working disaster recovery, and maybe this tip will be useful to someone else. And I'd still like to know why I can't access the USB disks from a recovery boot, and whether there's anything I can do about that.

The above was my original query. I'll add, first of all, that these are NTFS hard disks, and I never assigned any drive letters, so they just came up with the next available letter. If memory serves, when I couldn't "see" the USB drive, I think a hole was left in the drive order. That is, I think, the g: drive was missing but the next letter was filled in, or something like that. I don't recall exactly, but could experiment if the question is relevant.

It strikes me a very odd that there's nothing dynamic about the recovery CD. That is, Ghost itself may be updated, but there's no mechanism to update the recovery environment. That seems a serious limitation.

I have pounded the drum about the inability of Ghost 9/10 to update the Recovery CD:

http://ghost.radified.com/norton_ghost_90.htm

At Point #6, the eloquent Mr. Pleo (who I respectfully disagree with on many points) reponded thusly:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1126044747

Ghost 9.0 has been criticized because the Norton Ghost CD/Symantec Recovery Disk CD – unlike the application itself – is not updated through the Symantec LiveUpdate facility.  There is no technical reason why Symantec could not disseminate a new version of the CD, in the event that a problem was discovered; however, to-date, this has not proven to be necessary.  In contrast, the user should understand that Symantec hasn’t updated Ghost 2003 since 2002 (when version 2003 was released) and one Ghost 2003 expert on this forum used the adjective “dead” in describing updates for Ghost 2003.  The Ghost 9.0 application, however, has been updated through LiveUpdate in 2005.

RAD note: Ghost 10 is similar to Ghost 9 in this respect.

Rad wrote on Nov 25^th, 2005 at 10:57pm:

I have pounded the drum about the inability of Ghost 9/10 to update the Recovery CD:

I don't think they are "unable" to update the RE CD Rad. I gather you can buy Ghost 10 either as an ISO download or a boxed edition. Symantec could easily provide an updated ISO for download which I feel they will have to do with Ghost 10. Not so good if you are on dial-up, but 400 MB on broadband, easy.

PseudointellectualHorse,


Quote:

I think a hole was left in the drive order

I think the RE wants that hole letter as the drive letter for your external HD. It was in my case. Try changing the drive letter of your ext HD (in Disk Management) to that hole letter. Then boot to the RE and see if your ext HD has a drive letter.

Brian wrote on Nov 26^th, 2005 at 3:12am:

PseudointellectualHorse, I think the RE wants that hole letter as the drive letter for your external HD. It was in my case. Try changing the drive letter of your ext HD (in Disk Management) to that hole letter. Then boot to the RE and see if your ext HD has a drive letter.

Okay, I tried this, and it doesn't seem to affect the situation on my PC. For the record, my "normal" drive letter allocation (non-removable devices, although I think the card readers might be internally hooked up to a USB port):

c: hard disk
d:,e: CD
f:,g:,h:,i: card readers

So the first normally-free letter is j:. I set my Western Digital USB drive to j:, and also plugged in a USB key drive, which became k:. When I boot under the recovery CD, the USB key is there as k:, but j: remains missing. The d: drive has been transposed to x:, and there's a z: RAM drive, as is typical.

I booted back to normal WinXP and set the WD USB drive to n:, and then again booted into the recovery environment. It still skipped j:, and n: was not present either.

Then I switched from the USB connector to the FireWire connector, and booted into the recovery environment for the third time. This time, the WD drive was visible as n:.

So my only consistent report is that I have under no circumstances been able to access the external drive from the recovery environment via the USB connection; on the other hand, it has consistently worked through the FireWire connection.

Oh, yeah, and every time I boot into the recovery environment, the clock gets set back an hour. Maybe a daylight savings time thing?

My hole theory has been shot down.

I see the same time difference but I haven't spent any effort seeing whether I should add or subtract an hour in the RE. We have DST at present too.

My experience was the same. I tried two different external usb drives on several different drive letter possiblities. I tried them separately and together. I tried them on different usb ports. I was never able to get ghost to recognize them. Version 9 works fine.

I also saw the clock set back issue.

To make matters worse, there seems to be some incompatability with the SATA drivers ghost 10 has on the CD and the SATA required on my Dell 8400. If I just used the ones supplied by ghost 10, I would get a blue screen of death and a forced reboot. If I loaded the ones I loaded with 9, all was well.

I finally gave up on this product in disgust, and sent it back to Symantec for a refund. Since it was part of a package with their Internet Security bundle, I'm waiting to see how they react.

Brad

brad bortner


Quote:

Since it was part of a package with their Internet Security bundle, I'm waiting to see how they react.

Unless each item was priced separately--I'm betting you will have to return the *package*, and not the individual items.

Of course, if what you have said *sent it back to Symantec for a refund* means you sent only Ghost 10 back *individually*--too late now--but, should have asked Symantec's customer service how to handle such a return--hope everything doesn't get *scrambled* and *lost* in the system  :-[ !

To summarize this thread to-date, it appears that the Ghost 10 recovery environment has difficulty recognizing some storage devices when they conflict with "reserved" drive letters.  In some cases, the procedure recommended by Ghost4me to manually change a drive letter may solve this issue:

Quote:

1. Right click My Computer, then select Manage 2. Select Disk Management 3. Highlight your external USB disk drive, right click for properties and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" 4. Change it to a low letter, such as e: or f: depending on what you have already used. 5. ok, etc.

The lesson for all Ghost 10 users is to follow Symantec's warning in the Norton Ghost 10.0 User's Guide (page 29):

Quote:

To ensure that you can access the recovery environment in the event that you need to restore your entire computer system, you should start the Symantec recovery environment. … If the recovery environment does not run as expected, you can take action early to fix the problem.

In other words, it is highly prudent to test the recovery environment before you need it.  That is an obvious statement - of course - but one that I fear not all users will heed.

ummm, I don't believe that the reserved letter issue captures it.

With some folks, it seems the problem was that they accidently stepped on a reserved letter. With others,  it seems that the USB drive will not be recognized no matter what letter it is assigned.

I think the only consensus is that this recover environment seems to be much buggier than for Ghost 9 in terms of USB drive recognition, seeming to have SATA support that it might or might not have, and messing with folks system clock.

wrote on Nov 27^th, 2005 at 1:17pm:

ummm, I don't believe that the reserved letter issue captures it. With some folks, it seems the problem was that they accidently stepped on a reserved letter. With others,  it seems that the USB drive will not be recognized no matter what letter it is assigned.

You can always verify whether the Recovery Environment itself recognizes the USB drive:
After booting the Ghost 10 RE CD, select the utilities, and then run the partition utility (I forgot the exact name of it).  It will display all of your drives and partitions that the pre-XP environment sees.

In my case, the Pre-XP always saw all the USB drives, but then Ghost 10 would not.

Of course knowing that, only confirms that it is a Ghost problem and not a XP CD boot problem.

Exactly.  I'm really amazed that S could take something that basically worked really well (the ghost 9 recovery environment) and break it in a new release.

So...I don't suppose it would be possible to take the entirety of this thread and dump it in the lap of Symantec Tech Support? I'd be happy to think that Symantec acknowledged the existence of a problem and was at least contemplating a solution. (Although unless they provide a facility to burn an update to the recovery CD-ROM, it's not clear how they could fix it. They're certainly not going to mail out new CD-ROMs to registered users, nor would I expect them to.)

I see some people have claimed that Ghost 9 didn't have this problem with USB drives. Ghost 10 is my first and only Ghost, so I can't test that. But since my PC is of a fairly recent design (Dell Dimension 9100, with dual-CPU and PCI Express slot, etc.), I assumed the newest software might be necessary.

PseudointellectualHorse wrote on Nov 27^th, 2005 at 5:41pm:

So...I don't suppose it would be possible to take the entirety of this thread and dump it in the lap of Symantec Tech Support?

I think it would help if someone else would open a problem with Symantec Ghost 10 and let us know:  1) if they are aware of the problem and 2) if they have a fix.  And of course what they have to say.

I opened the problem over a month ago myself.  I keep looking on the Symantec KB to see if they have posted the problem with USB drives and/or restricted letters (for sure z: from my experience), but so far nothing.

I sent them a detailed e-mail via their tech support form over a week ago. I received an automated response saying I would hear back in a 24 hours. So far I have heard nothing.

Here is an admittedly bizarre suggestion . . .

Suppose that you used Ghost 10 to create an independent recovery point without employing any of the new version 10 features (e.g., encryption).  Could the Ghost 9 recovery environment then recognize and restore that version 10 image?  If so, such a path forward would allow a user to temporarily bypass the Ghost 10 “reserved drive letter”/USB/SATA issue until the problem is addressed by Symantec.

Perhaps someone who has a suitably equipped PC with Ghost 10 installed and a Ghost 9 CD could test this (crazy?) hypothesis . . . .

P.S.:  Hey, at least give me credit for being creative!

Yes, I tested restoring a couple files (not the whole partition) of a Ghost 10 image from the Ghost 9 recovery CD.  It worked fine.

Ghost 9 uses it's own arbitrary drive letters but I can see from the disk-id which volume is which.

That's one way I kept insisting to "tech-support" that it USED to work (ghost 9 cd) and now it doesn't (ghost 10 cd).  The other bonus is that Ghost 9 because it uses a different xp recovery environment recognizes all my external devices.

Still no response from Symantec if/when they will fix it.

No response from Symantec at all on my end. Last time I needed tech support from symantec, I actually had to write their president. A few days later, I received a call....

Ghost4me, my own experience is that Symantec is no longer providing technical support through email sent to technicalsupport@symantec.iseva.net.  All emails I have sent to that address have simply resulted in a reply instructing me to use Live Technical Support (http://live-symantec.custhelp.com).

Have you pursued this problem through the Symantec Live Technical Support chat option?

Pleonasm wrote on Nov 28^th, 2005 at 9:12pm:

Ghost4me, my own experience is that Symantec is no longer providing technical support through email sent to technicalsupport@symantec.iseva.net.  All emails I have sent to that address have simply resulted in a reply instructing me to use Live Technical Support (http://live-symantec.custhelp.com). Have you pursued this problem through the Symantec Live Technical Support chat option?

Yes, I started with Live-Chat support.  After 2 hours of "chatting", he gave up.  Mostly I would ask a question, and he would say "hold on while I check", then come back in 2 minutes with some answer.  In all fairness, it's probably a new problem, so the level-1 chat people can't solve it.

Then I exchanged emails for about 2-3 weeks per their suggestion.  Those consisted of "check bios level", send this, send that, etc.  That lasted until I figured out the problem myself and told THEM (level 1 3/4) what the problem was, but I still haven't gotten any verification that they reproduced the problem or even where it is in their queue to even look at it...

'Unsticky!'

EP :'(

I guess, based on the silence, that no one had heard boo from Symantec....

I have just written to the president of symantec concerning this issue, and referenced this link as well. Obvioulsy, it won't get to him, but when I've done such in the past it gets kicked down to a tech who will called me. We shall see....

To my way of thinking, the key lesson learned from this thread is:

• Always the test the Symantec recovery environment before you need it.  If it does not work on your PC for whatever reason, your choices are (1) change your hardware or its configuration, or (2) use a different image backup utility.  Not all utilities work on all PC configurations, and Ghost 10.0 is no exception to this rule.

Obviously you should test your recovery environment before you need it. No one disputes that....

What is bizarre is that ghost 10 would not work, while ghost 9 does.

What is more bizarre is that it seems impossible to get Symantec to give  a response about it.

Brad, I agree with all your comments.

No doubt Symantec should be more responsive.  However, if Ghost 10 does not perform as you wish, I recommend that you return the product, get a refund, and choose a different image backup tool.  That course of action would be far easier than changing your PC hardware.

It is indeed odd that Symantec induced a problem in Ghost 10 that was not present in Ghost 9.  Obviously, this could not have been intentional by Symantec.  I am only speculating, but some other enhancement in Ghost 10 must be yielding an unanticipated consequence.  Hopefully, Symantec will investigate the issue and provide a fix or a work-around approach.

By the way, Symantec has a number of offices located in cities throughout the United States.  If you receive no reply to your communication to the President of Symantec, you might consider knocking on the door of a local office.

I have read this entire thread with some interest, and... have the answer to part of the puzzle:


Quote:

I am only speculating, but some other enhancement in Ghost 10 must be yielding an unanticipated consequence.

Symantec switched from a proprietary boot environment to a Windows PE based solution.  The "hard-coded" drive letters X: & Z: come from WinPE NOT Ghost 10.  These drive letters; X: for the bootable PE media (whether CD, ISO, etc.) & Z: Ramdrive are part of the enhancements of Windows PE 2005 which became available to OEM's in early 2005.

Inability to recognize certain USB drives when attached to a hub or inserted AFTER boot is also WinPE issues.  Specific storage subsystem driver support may also be related to the underlying WinPE environment, as it can be built off of a Server 2003 SP1 source (with Windows PE 2005) instead of XP SP2 media.

In the corporate environment, it is a regular occurence to update your Windows PE based solutions with latest drivers for NIC's & storage media; something that Symantec is apparently not interested in doing.

I may have to go out & buy a copy of Norton Ghost 10 just to get my hands on the ISO for the recovery environment & investigate inside of UltraISO & see how it is laid out.

Hope this helps!

Yes, I think that some of the letters are reserved is pretty evident.

My issues with non-recognized USB drives, howerver, occurs even when the drive is on when the recovery environment boots.

The infuriating thing about Symantec is not so much that they released a buggy version of their software, but that there is no way to communicate with them that is meaningful....

wrote on Dec 5^th, 2005 at 7:47pm:

Yes, I think that some of the letters are reserved is pretty evident. My issues with non-recognized USB drives, howerver, occurs even when the drive is on when the recovery environment boots. The infuriating thing about Symantec is not so much that they released a buggy version of their software, but that there is no way to communicate with them that is meaningful....

To verify if your usb drive is recognized by the recovery environment,
Boot from the Recovery CD
After Ghost starts go to the Utilites
Start up the parition info utility (forgot the exact name)
See if the utility shows all your partitions and your usb drive(s).

If so, then see comments early in this thread about going back to XP, and hard assigning low drive letters ( like f: or g: ) to your usb drive and then trying the cd again.

See my earlier posts. I tried all of that. No combation of different drive letters worked, on either of two different usb drives.

I presume that there is a vague possiblity that they both have chip sets that are somehow being directed, but....this seems unlikely, since it was two different brands, and ghost 9 detects them fine, as do all other aps within windows.

Another small data point, FWIW. I had previously posted that I could not under any circumstances access my external USB drive when booted under the Ghost 10 recovery environment. It was suggested that Ghost 9 was worth a try, and so I borrowed a copy of Ghost 9 and booted from the CD and found: Now I could access the external USB drive, however my hard drive C was gone! I guess this isn't surprising, because my Dell Dimension 9100 has a new SATA RAID configuration, and presumably Ghost 9 didn't know what to do with it. So anyway, I've got my choice; either target but no data under Ghost 10 or data but no target under Ghost 9. Interesting but not helpful.

If you download the SATA Raid drivers from dells file list for your PC, you simply load them by hitting F6 during the recovery boot process (its in the manual) to load the new drivers.

After that, you will have access to your hard drive AND the external USB drive.

One of the reasons I upgraded to 10 was so I did not have to go through this extra step, but even that did not work. Unless I loaded the SATA drivers manually, I would often get a blue screen of death....AND could never get 10 to see the USB drive.

I'm now back to using ghost 9. Works great. Less aggravating....

Brad, did you successfully get the SATA drivers onto your Ghost 9 CD?

My setup is probably different than most. I have the hard drive on two computers partitioned 9 ways from C - K. I started doing this 15 years ago when I read about the concept, not putting all your eggs in one basket, etc. I've never had any problems. The cd drive is L, the dvd drive is M. When an external firewire  hard drive drive is attached windows gives it drive N. One computer has a multifunction printer scanner combo attached by usb and windows gives it drive O. I use a program called virtual drive that enables you to copy game cd's to the hard drive. The program then sets up virtual drives. The cd file is inserted into the virtual drive and the game thinks its cd is in the cd drive. It saves inserting and swapping cd's. I set it up to use drives P - Z as virtual drives. I got ghost 10 RE to work by releasing drives X and Z on both computers. I also had to disconnect the multifunction printer on the one computer. I don't have ghost 9 but v2i protector which is a predecessor of ghost 10. Its RE saw my setup without having to change anything. The point is that with modern technology there shouldn't be any need to change anything. This is like going back to the DOS days where you had to fiddle with any new program to get it to work. That was why computers were just for hobbyists who liked to do that. Computing didn't become mainstream until the last 5 or 6 years when winxp put an end to most of that. Ghost 10 is a setback as most people don't backup and have no idea what that means. This does nothing to further that concept. What is needed is for new computers to have backup devices installed by default like a cd drive. Windows needs to do image backups by default so the average user need do nothing but is protected. We have the technology for that now.  ;D

Brian:

I got side tracked trying to get BartPE to work properly. I'm dropping that for now, and moving on to the SATA driver issue. Looks like I actually have top pay the registration fee on the ISO utility, since I believe the files are more than 300 meg.

By the way, which file within the image did you make your edits to?  I see the edits themselves in your posting, but not what file they reside in....

Brad

My PC hardware configuration may be simpler than most:  an internal hard disk drive partitioned into C: and D:, and an external Maxtor drive (G: ) connected via FireWire.  The Ghost 10 recovery environment sees all drives/partitions properly, and each is correctly identified by its Windows designated drive letter.

From what I've read, the firewire drive is not a problem for ghost 10, it is external usb drives that are causing the issues....

Pleo, my Ghost 10 RE was fine until I made some changes.

I assume your optical drives are E and F. One of these will become X in the RE. Would you be willing to try this.......(I don't have a firewire device)

With the firewire HD unplugged, plug in a USB flash drive (or any USB device that is assigned a drive letter) which should then be G:  Now plug in your firewire HD and it should be H:  Boot to the RE and let us know if the firewire drive is seen as H: drive. Next, remove the USB and firewire devices, reboot and attach your firewire HD which should still be H:  Boot to the RE and let us know if the firewire drive is seen as H: drive.

Brad, it's the txtsetup.sif

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1113183318

Brian, a question:  what is the test you recommend in Reply #87 seeking to demonstrate?  The ‘confusion’ the Ghost 10 recovery environment (or Windows PE?) is experiencing ought to be independent of whether the bus technology is defined by IEEE 1394 or USB – right?  It would seem to me that the problem is unlikely to be resident within the transport layer but is at the application/operating system layer of the architecture.

You are correct:  E and F are DVD optical drives on my PC, and I’ll need to check if the Ghost 10 recovery environment sees either as X.

Additionally, I’ll attached a USB drive (flash memory) and explore how this is detected the Ghost 10 recovery environment.

You also said “my Ghost 10 RE was fine until I made some changes.”  Is your Ghost 10 recovery environment now in a functional state – or, did some of your experiments (unfortunately) have a ‘permanent’ negative impact on using Ghost 10?

Thanks for asking this question Pleo as I didn't make clear the implications of my experiment in post #15.

I only plug in my USB external HD when it is needed and it's seen as G and H (two partitions). It is seen as G and H in the Ghost 10 RE.

Now let's say I was using my card reader (G H I J) and I decided to plug in my USB HD as well (certainly a possibility) then it would be assigned K and L. In the future when the USB HD is plugged in it remains K and L even without the card reader attached. While it is K and L in WinXP it's not seen in the RE. If I change it back to G and H in Disk Management it's again seen in the RE.

I assume that if my USB HD was connected all the time then it would remain G and H even when the card reader was attached and there would be no problem. Somehow changing the USB HD drive letters caused the problem.

I think this scenario is realistic and could happen in real life. Does this make sense?

Thanks Brian. It would have helped if I had read carefully the first time you posted!  I'm just waiting on my unlock key for UltraISO, and than I'll give your recommendations a try....

Brad

Brian, concerning your comment "If I change it back to G and H in Disk Management it's again seen in the RE," is it possible using BartPE to invoke Disk Management (or an equivalent tool) in order to change the Windows XP drive letters?  If so, then when such a problem arises, the solution would be to run Disk Management under BartPE before booting into the Ghost 10 recovery environment - right?

I admit this is undesirable and represents what should be an unnecessary step, but if it is successful, it could represent a work-around solution.  Your thoughts?

Good thought Pleo. I just tried it and it doesn't work.
Drive letters in BartPE are like Ghost 9, sequential and not related to WinXP drive letters. I changed the drive letters of my USB HD in BartPE but on rebooting to Windows they were the same as before.

Brian,

OK, I have a fully liscense version of UltraISO. I have located txtsetup.sif. Now (write as if to an idiot), step by step, how do I edit it and than save the whole thing as an ISO file back to another CD.  Do I just let it open in Notepad, and make the edits there? Do I than save the whole CD to a HD directory, and than burn it to another CD. Sorry, but Ultra is not the most intuitive of packages for me...

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Brad, from one idiot to another. Put the Ghost 9 CD in your CD drive and click Exit when it tries to run. Start UltraISO, click Tools, Make CD/DVD image, choose Output file destination and name, dot in Standard ISO, Make. Click Return when complete.

Put your CD away. We will only use this ISO from now.

Double-click your ISO and it appears in the upper panes of UltraISO.

In the left upper pane of UltraISO, open I386 folder. Right click txtsetup.sif in the right upper pane, click Extract to, choose Desktop. Go to that file, double click and it should open in Notepad. Make the edits (it will frighten you when you look at what is contained in the file) and Save.

From your F6 floppy, copy iastor.inf and iastor.sys to your Desktop.

In the left upper pane of UltraISO, open I386 folder. Left drag txtsetup.sif to the right upper pane of UltraISO to overwrite the original file.

In the left upper pane of UltraISO, open I386, System 32, Drivers folder. Drag your iastor.sys to the right upper pane to overwrite the original file.

In the left upper pane of UltraISO, open I386, INF folder. Drag your iastor.inf to the right upper pane to overwrite the original file.

File, Save.

Now it is done. Click Tools, Burn CD/DVD image, Burn. Use a RW disc at first in case you have made an error.

Good luck. It’s not easy.

Brian,

Your instructions worked like a charm. No more F6 during a recover load for me!  The one minor tweak I made was that I had no idea how to put the registered market after Intel, so I just wrote "Intel(R)..." instead.

Now, can you give me an idiots guide to why I should also have a Bart's CD?

Many thanks for all your help!

Brad ;D ;D

It's nice NOT to have to use a floppy.


Quote:

how to put the registered market after Intel

Don't bother now but you should have copied and pasted my lines.

BartPE is the handiest CD I've owned. I use it to delete files that can't be deleted easily in Windows, edit boot.ini, "fix" computers that won't boot to Windows, extract data from unbootable computers and also to create images of new computers that don't yet have imaging software. It's one of those CD's that keeps finding uses for itself.

As far as the Ghost plugin is concerned, you don't really need to have that on BartPE unless you wan't to restore over the network. Ghost 9 CD doesn't have NIC drivers for our computer. I haven't tried to solve that problem. BartPE does have the drivers. Also you can create images and do Copy Drive from BartPE.

I thought of the cut and past idea AFTER I had manually typed in all your corrections. Surprisingly, I got it right the first go!

Another suprise, I received and e-mail back from Norton 2 weeks after my first trouble complaint on ghost 10. They asked me to run a system information gathering utility and e-mail it to them. I did two days ago, but have not heard back since. I'm sure the -mail is bouncing around India somewhere....

Still no word from symantec on this issue, either acknowledging it or saying that a fix is on the way. Given their history, they'll probably just fix it for version 11.

Here is the final non-answer I've gotten from Symantec e-mail support on this issue:

Hello brad,

Thank you for contacting Symantec Online Technical Support.
Symantec would like to apologize for any inconvenience or loss of
productivity this issue has caused you. This issue has been reported to
Symantec Development, but currently we have not been able to reproduce this
issue.

Our support staff thanks you for your patience as we investigate the root
cause of this situation. We will continue our efforts in tracking this issue,
and will update the Symantec Online Knowledge Base to include new updates.

If you have any further concerns regarding the product, please feel free to revert. Thank You for contacting Symantec Online Technical Support.

Best regards,

Raja Achudhan
Symantec Authorised Technical Support

Pleonasm, I realize you have had USB distractions but do you have any information for us regarding your firewire connected HD and drive letters?

I received my money back from Symantec today for Ghost 10. I fear their issues with USB recognition will not be cleared up until ghost 11. They seem to have made a policy decision that it is cheaper to return folks money than have a real QA, tech support function...

Nonetheless, ghost 9 just saved my butt again last night. Thanks, Brian for the pointers on creating a one CD recovery disk for ghost 9, with no PF 6 required....Very helpful.

Brad (and others), I'm sorry you had a bad experience with Ghost 10 external USB hard drive recognition, as I and others have had.

I just emailed Symantec December 19th to find out the status of this original problem which I reported/opened with them back on October 12, 2005.  So far no response, but the average email turnaround response is usually about a week.

However, 2 1/2 months for an open SERIOUS problem is unacceptable!

I'll let you know when/if/what they say.

They e-mail they have sent me (see my earlier post) claims that they cannot reproduce the problem. Very strange. I'm betting that we don't see a fix until ghost 11...

Brad

wrote on Dec 24^th, 2005 at 6:59pm:

Nonetheless, ghost 9 just saved my butt again last night.

Good to hear. And more butt saves to come in the future.

Hi guys,

After reading this thread with a growing sense of horror, my hard drive went tits up today, as I cannot see my lovely USB drive that contains my supposed foolproof back up; I am now at a loss as to what to do.

Has anyone worked a way round this problem?

Thanks,


Mark

Mark,  Yikes! Sorry to hear of the problem.  Here is what I would suggest.  

1. Since you obviously have access to a running PC, I would open a LiveChat incident with Symantec:
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/home_homeoffice/products/ghost/nghost_10/contact.html

2. Let us know if they are able to resolve it.

3. I have had success with changing the drive letter of the USB external drive.  When you had it attached to your other PC, what drive letter did it have?  I know z: and some other letters are an issue with the Ghost 10 Recovery CD environment.

Use the Disk Management to change drive letter.

My Computer
Right-click, Manage
Maximize screen
Disk Management
Highlight USB drive in top and right click,
Change Drive letters and paths.  
Change it to a low alphabet letter such as e: or f:.
OK, OK, etc.

Then attach USB drive to original PC, make sure it is on, and reboot that PC and see if it shows drive.

I'm assuming you have Ghost 10. Right?

Please let us know what LiveChat says or if they say there is a fix for the problem.  There are SEVERAL people hear waiting for a fix.

Good luck.

Mark,

I just thought of another option.  If LiveChat is unable to resolve the problem, you could ask them for the ftp location whre you can download an ISO image of the Ghost 9 Recovery CD.  You would have to use a burning program such as Nero, etc. to then create a bootable CD from that download.

The problem does not appear to occur in Ghost 9, and the backups from Ghost 10 are downward compatible (so they told me).  I tested a couple files from a Ghost 10 backup from Ghost 9 CD and it seemed ok when I tested it.

Let us know how you're doing and resolving it.  Thanks.

Jamcoops.

Could you confirm that you can't see your USB HD from the Ghost 10 Recovery Environment. Can you see your HD's? Do you have other USB devices which you have used in the past?

Hi guys,

Was already changing the drive letter via my laptop but alas, after several attempts still no luck.  Still waiting to talk to Symantec as a Ver 9 CD seems the best option at present.

Brian...Yes I can't 'see' the USB drive but if I go into 'edit partition table' I have two discs (1 & 2) with 1 being 160GB internal drive and the other 120GB USB drive. I cannot see the destination drive, this may be because it is new as my original is disconnected at present.

I have lots of USB stuff, pen drives, card readers, palm stuff etc...

Thanks again....

Mark

Mark,


Quote:

.Yes I can't 'see' the USB drive but if I go into 'edit partition table' I have two discs (1 & 2) with 1 being 160GB internal drive and the other 120GB USB drive.

This has been our experience too. The drive is seen in Edit Partition Table but it doesn't have a drive letter.

Try reading Reply #15. It's hard going but it probably explains your problem although it's not a solution as you can't get into Windows to change drive letters.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1131831389;start=15#15

John's suggestion re the Ghost 9 CD definitely will work.

Are you able to mount the external HD internally (IDE)?

What problem are you having with Windows?

Brian, as I read Mark's problem it sounded remarkably similar to yours with all the USB devices.

This is just a guess but:  If you (or Mark) disconnected all other USB devices, then rebooted, then hard assigned the USB hard drive to a low drive letter that had NEVER been used before, do you think the Ghost 10 Recovery Environment CD would work?

John,

I haven't tried that. I didn't really have a low drive letter left as I was already up to L (I think). In my case when I changed the USB HD back to its original G and H, it worked.

If I recall correctly Brad Bortner couldn't see the external drive at all. Ever. He tried a multitude of drive letters.

Hi John,

I treid that, removed everything from the PC, assigned the letter P to the USB drive and rebooted, still no joy.  I am pretty sure that P has never been used.

Chatting to Symantec at present, juts finished going through all the obvious stuff...

Thanks again...

Mark

Mark, if my theory is sound, you have to use the drive letter that was used the very first time you plugged your external HD.

I thought you couldn't get into Windows????

Hi Brian,

I changed the letter by connecting the HD to my laptop which is fine.

By the way, Symantec advised using F6 during startup and loading the drivers from there.  I will try this again although I belive it has been done before.

Also I asked for the FTD addy for Ghost 9 recovery, this is the reply:

Thanks. one more thing, do you have a FTP address for a download of GHost 9 recovery disc.  I can use this to boot my PC as it does not have the same USB issue?


Kashif(Sun Jan 08 2006 19:56:53 GMT+0000 (GMT Standard Time))>

Yes we do have FTP site access, but before providing the access to that site, I would like to discuss this issue with our senior technicians and then I can send you an email at : mark@jamcoops.f2s.com
about FTP and the USB drive issue of Norton Ghost 10.0 Recovery Environment. Is that okay with you?


Mark C(Sun Jan 08 2006 19:58:29 GMT+0000 (GMT Standard Time))>

Yes that is fine.....thank you very much


Mark...

Brian,

FYI, two weeks ago I sent an email to Symantec support asking about the status of the original Recovery CD problem which I opened in October 2005.  Since I hadn't even gotten any response to the status question, I just now opened LiveChat and asked the same question.  Here's the answer:

=============
> Please note that we have successfully received your e-mail and the technician will be emailing you the solution.

John > in how long?

> Please note that our technician is analyzing the information that you have provided. He shall be emailing you the solution after sometime.
=============

Sighhh . . . Wouldn't it be simpler if Symantec would just assign a Ghost technician to monitor this forum?  (I guess that is too obvious)

Question,

If I reinstall windows, then install Ghost, then recover from the windows interface with Ghost, will that recover my PC?

Thanks,

MArk

Jamcoops,


Quote:

I changed the letter by connecting the HD to my laptop which is fine.

Now I'm really confused. Could you outline your original problem?

wrote on Jan 8^th, 2006 at 4:11pm:

Question, If I reinstall windows, then install Ghost, then recover from the windows interface with Ghost, will that recover my PC? Thanks, MArk

You can't restore an OS partition from Windows.

Hi Brian,

Sorry if I am getting a bit fragmented.

I have a PC and a laptop, whilst trying to copy my dying HD to a new HD windows completely failed.  However I can't restore from Ghost to the new HD as I cannot see my USB drive whilst in the recovery enviroment.  Therefore I am stuffed....at present.

Mark

Jamcoops,

Here's one other recovery idea:

You appear to have a laptop and a desktop pc, correct?  Are they or were they connected via a network where they previously could see each other?  If so, you could:

1. Attach the USB external drive to the laptop
2. On your laptop, enable the path/folder of the USB drive as a shared network resource.
3. Boot your desktop PC from the Ghost 10 Recovery CD.
4. Enable network access from the advanced options there.
5. Browse to the path/folder name you previously assigned from your laptop.
6. Restore that way.

Very clever.

And *resourceful*  ;) !

Hi guys,

Won't let me map a drive to the laptop from ghost, used laptop name and IP address.  However I am downloading a copy of Ghost 9 from Symantec, very slowly though at 11.7kb/sec...not me it's their end...So I will try Ghost 9 in the wee hours of the morning here...

Thanks for all your help and I will let you know the outcome..

Mark

It's good to know that Symantec will allow a download of Ghost 9 for this situation. Let us know the outcome.

Brian wrote on Jan 8^th, 2006 at 4:23pm:

Very clever.

Thanks Brian and NightOwl.  I sometimes think our job is to work *around* problems rather than fix them.  Symantec ought to pay anyone here $29.95 for each solution.  From that formula both you guys would be wealthy(er)!  ;D

I'm glad Symantec gave out the Ghost 9 access for Mark.  I think the network access would have worked if they hadn't come through.  I suspect the desktop needed a different ip address and subnet mask, plus sometimes user that is predefined on the laptop.  (I should test that myself).

Hi all,

Update....Ghost 9 ran through its process, got a couple of errors "string length does not match file size" which I got round using the supplied tools.  After that my drives, according to Ghost, were reinstalled.

Windows would not boot, NTLDR missing, used repair function on XP to get back in.  All files present but had not recreated the original login profiles.  Using regedit to point the restored files back to the right logins. However, it seems that no executable files have been restored winword, Money 05 etc...all the dlls and other bits are there but .exe are missing.  Therefore am reinstalling Office etc...

I am happy that I have not lost any important info to do with my business, however I am very disapointed with Symantec, should have learnt my lesson when I vowed never to buy their product again after using Internet security.

I would like to test Ghost 10