i just tried using ghost 2003 for the first time. after reading the guide i used the windows interface to select my options for my first backup and created a boot disk.  it then rebooted inorder to drop down to dos. However nothing happened when it restarted, the last thing the screen reads is "verifying dmi pool data" and then it hangs, i waited a very long while and still nothing was happening. tried restarting my pc and the same happens, tried using the ghost boot disk and it starts to load from the a: drive but then hangs again.

Any advice on how to get my system to just boot to windows again would be greatfully recieved as i can now do nothing with it thanks


p.s i have one sata hard drive,  looking through this forum i see people referencing problems with it not being dos compatable but  im still not to sure what i should be doing

It sounds like your Master Boot Record (MBR) is messed up.  It could also be your partition boot recored, but I am leaning toward the MBR.  If you are using WinXP, then you can try booting from the Windows CD and follow the instructions to repair the operating system.  If that doesn't fix it, then try booting from the CD again and the follow the instructions to go to the "Recovery Console" and run the command "FixMBR".

Let me know if you need more detailed instructions for that or if you have any more questions.  NightOwl and Pleonasm both seem to be good with boot records and such, so maybe they have better ideas.

wrote on Apr 14^th, 2006 at 3:04pm:

"... i have one sata hard drive, looking through this forum i see people referencing problems with it not being dos compatable but  im still not to sure what i should be doing..."

It sounds like you may be hung up in the Ghost DOS Virtual Partition, but don't fret because competent help should arrive momentarily.  (Oops, see what I told you - it has started arriving even before I capped off my reply!)

As to the SATA HDD, was it installed originally or did it replace an IDE HDD, i.e., I replaced a Maxtor 40GB IDE HDD with a Maxtor 120GB SATA HDD in my Dell Dimension 8100 after installing a Vantec UGT-ST200 PCI-to-SATA host controller card.

EP :'(

Luke Robinson

As El_Pescador said, it's probably a compatibility issue with the Virtual Partition that Ghost 2003 uses if you attempt to use Ghost from the Windows interface.

Here's references that seem to help most folks recover easily (if you haven't done too many other things that have made recovery difficult):

How to use GhReboot

Cannot start Windows after starting a Ghost 2003 task from Windows

How to restart the computer into Windows if a problem is encountered after running Ghost 2003

And here's references regarding Ghost and SATA issues:

SATA HDD problems with Ghost:

Norton Ghost Sata problems

Rad Forum Thread on SATA HDD problems with Ghost:

SATA HDD's and Ghost!

Summary Post of SATA HDD Problems and Possible Solutions:

Re: Bootable cd without floppy

Report back with your progress--or questions.

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Thanks guys. The links Night Owl posted cleared everything up for me and i now have full use of my computer once more, woot! The ghreboot.exe did the trick straightaway and got me back to windows.

Although i do not have the time now to ghost my machine I have checked that using either the -noide and -fni switches from the PC-DOS will both allow ghost to see my harddrive so I am anticipating no other problems.

Luke Robinson

Thanks for the feedback--glad it worked out easily.