Hi Ghost Headz,

I'm new to this particular forum but normally hang out at forums dedicated to music production and PC DAW tweaking.
I've enjoyed Ghost for years as a means of taming my music computers so they can be reliable.

I've built a fleet of 6 identical systems for deployment as music workstations. On my master machine I've had no problems Creating my final master image of the WinXPSP2 partition by using the Advanced -> Interactive Mode. Ghost launches fine upon reboot in DOS as expected.

I've transferred the image to the other 5 machines so it is on the second partition of the system via copying the GHO file which I burned to DVD. I've installed Ghost 2003 on each of these systems and used the Live Update feature (hopefully ensuring SATA compatibility problems are addressed) and have successfully restored the Ghost image created on the MAster system on to each of these system. All except for just 1 machine !!! ...

The problem is, on just one machine, launching Ghost in Interactive mode (i.e. so that I can restore the image from DOS) gives me a huge headache which I can't seem to get past - it gets to DOS fine, launches GHOST no problem, Ghost's backgorund screen appears but the Mouse pointer remains frozen as an Hourglass and the Menus of Ghost do not appear.

I can't understand what is causing this - I've ensured BIOS settings are consistent, etc and this is a proper Legit copy of Ghost 2003 rather than a naughty version
(which came with the Ghost 9 I bought which is a pile of turd!!) .... Launching in interactive mode works perfectly on all other machines except this one system.

I'm not certain where to begin troubleshooting since this system has identical hardware and (I'm sure also) BIOS settings as the systems where creating/restoring images was working fine.


System components for all 6 systems are:
Pentium 4 3.00Ghz HT; 1GB RAM; Asus P5LD2-VM motherboard with a single SATA hard drive (having 2 partitions) + Pioneer DVR110 DVD drive. I'm sure SATA is working fine with Ghost since the other systems did not exhbit this freezing problem when attempting to launch Ghost in interactive mode.

if any Kind souls out there can think of where to begin troubleshooting that would be excellent ...

; )

Cheers and beers


jasefos

jasefos

On the system that's giving you the problem--open a *command window* in the directory where your ghost.exe is located and type: ghost.exe -ver.

What do you get?

Try launching Ghost on that system using the *-fni* switch:  ghost.exe -fni.

If you are setting things up using the Windows Ghost interface, go to Options > Norton Ghost > Ghost Command Line and a add just *-fni*--or during the setup, you can go to the *Options* using the *Advanced settings...* option during the setup steps to run Ghost Interactively.

Results?

Hi Nightowl,

Thanks for your prompt reply. That's very kind of you.


Quote:

On the system that's giving you the problem--open a *command window* in the directory where your ghost.exe is located and type: ghost.exe -ver.   What do you get?

Norton Ghost 2003 (build=793, cdrlib=3.1.25)
Copyright (C) 1998-2003 Symantec Corp. All rights reserved.



Quote:

Try launching Ghost on that system using the *-fni* switch:  ghost.exe -fni. If you are setting things up using the Windows Ghost interface, go to Options > Norton Ghost > Ghost Command Line and a add just *-fni*--or during the setup, you can go to the *Options* using the *Advanced settings...* option during the setup steps to run Ghost Interactively. Results?

I used the options in the Advanced Settings to append the -fni switch to Ghost.exe command line.

The result was the same as before ...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v465/jasefos/line6-democomps-ghostfreezing.jpg

The mouse pointer is frozen. After bashing some random keys I get an error message "Internal Stack Overflow - System Halted". The machine required the 3 finger salute in order to come back to life. It then presented me with Ghost's custom boot menu of course and returned to Windows without a problem.

I've even put my "master image" on this system by temporarily connecting the drive as a secondary drive into one of the systems where Ghost launches without issue in DOS. The image went on fine of course but returning the drive to its "home" system with the problem sees the problem persist.

Perhaps it's put some kind hidden mark on the drive or something? **shrugs**.  Not sure where to go from this point.

Cheers !

jasefos

jasefos

Even if the hardware is purchased at the same time and the model #'s are the same, there could be different manufacturing dates and the internal components may have been changed!

Try disconnecting the optical drive's communication cable--still same problem?  

On my system, if I right click on My Computer, select Properties, select Hardware tab, then Device Manager.

Right click the optical drive, select Properties, and go to the Details tab.

In the drop down box select *Device Instance Id*.  After a brief description, there's a long line and then a number--that number on my system represents the *firmware* version of the optical drive.  Are the firmware numbers all the same on all of your systems?

exactly the same issue i'm having.

It just sit's their. I left it open for 48hours, no result.

It has indeed something to do with the partitions structure.
When i put another (blank) disk in the system, it works fine.