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Rad Community Technical Discussion Boards (Computer Hardware + PC Software) >> Norton Ghost 2003,  Ghost v8.x + Ghost Solution Suite (GSS) Discussion Board >> Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
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Message started by adrian on Oct 20th, 2006 at 12:26pm

Title: Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
Post by adrian on Oct 20th, 2006 at 12:26pm
My profound apologies if this question is too basic or posted elsewhere but I just can't seem to find the answer in Rad's great Ghost guide or in an existing forum question.

My objective is to "Radify My New Laptop" and, despite all the guide's advice to prefer Ghost 2003 over Ghost 10, my non-existent DOS skills have persuaded me to go with Ghost 10. OK, so I need to image my "factory" configuration on to the laptop's optical drive before I install anything (including Ghost 10).

I tried booting from my Ghost 10 CD and that will let me recover images but not create them, so that was a dead end. "Plan B" was to try creating a bootable floppy (from my desktop Ghost 10) but there was no Boot Wizard Utility to be found in Ghost 10. "Plan C" was to copy the boot files from Rad's site on to a floppy and then add the ghost.exe. Being a relative computer neophyte, I went looking for "ghost.exe" and couldn't find any such file so I contacted Symantec "Live Chat" yesterday and, 60 mins later, they were completely useless - unwilling or unable to even tell me the answer to such a simple question as where to find a ghost.exe (< 1MB) file! I might be on the wrong track with my "Plan C" anyway if it would require me to try to muddle my way through DOS!

Help would be much appreciated! Is there (1) A way to accomplish imaging my factory configuration in a Windows environment or, if not, (2) In any environment that a neophyte like myself might reasonably accomplish before either (1) throwing the laptop out the window or (2) jumping out myself? :)

Title: Re: Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
Post by El_Pescador on Oct 20th, 2006 at 4:40pm

adrian wrote on Oct 20th, 2006 at 12:26pm:
"... I tried booting from my Ghost 10 CD and that will let me recover images but not create them, so that was a dead end..."

Au contraire, mon Ami!  Such is indeed the case for the Ghost 9 Recovery Disk with legacy images, but not the installation CDs for either Norton Ghost 10.0 or Norton Save & Restore which can simply boot from the CD itself (either product readily allows one to boot into a Windows XP Preinstalled Environment) and immediately engage the legacy Backup/Restore or Clone "cold-imaging" procedures by following the path 'Recover > Recover Data on My Computer > Recover using a legacy Ghost image' with the side benefit of bypassing both USB mass-storage device and SATA HDD glitches frequently encountered with DOS-dependent Ghost 2003.  In essence, this procedure uses restoreghost.exe (an alternate name for ghost32.exe) to allow both immediate creation of Ghost Backup images or the converse Recovery of such images that are in fact totally compatible and interchangeable with those *.gho/*.ghs files created with the ghost.exe of Norton Ghost 2003 - but not with those created with Ghost 9, Ghost 10.0, or Save & Restore during "hot-imaging".

EP :'(

Title: Re: Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
Post by Brian on Oct 20th, 2006 at 5:15pm
Excellent suggestion, EP. I keep forgetting that pearl.

Title: Re: Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
Post by adrian on Oct 20th, 2006 at 6:28pm
Thanks very much for the suggestion EP! Hope you can help me past the glitch I've encountered whilst trying to execute this!

I've successfully booted from the Ghost 10 CD and have made it as far as "Recover using a legacy Ghost image". I got a message that the writing to a CD/DVD functionality would need to be enabled if I wanted to do this and, since this is the whole purpose of what I'm trying to make happen, naturally I consulted the Ghost 8 Reference Guide for how to do this. It told me to:

"Ghost32.exe is installed with the Symantec Ghost Console and the Symantec Ghost Standard Tools; however, if you want to use Ghost32.exe to write to a CD/DVD, then you must ensure access to the following files:.............

To install drivers for Ghost32.exe to write to a CD/DVD on Windows NT/2000/XP,
1 On the Windows taskbar, click Start > Run.
2 At the command prompt, type
E:\Extras\OAKCDR\WinNT_2k_XP\Afsinst.exe /install /noflag
where E: is the drive letter for the CD drive.
3 Restart the computer."

But, when I tried to do this, I get a message that I cannot access this file (which is, of course, on my Ghost CD in the optical drive). Presumably this is because the solution Symantec suggests only works if Ghost is installed - which I obviously don't want to do).

Any suggestion would be much appreciated - I'm already swimming in the 'deep end' here! :(

Title: Re: Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
Post by Brian on Oct 20th, 2006 at 6:47pm
Adrian,

You won't be able to write directly to DVDs with ghost32.exe from the Recovery Environment. However you may be able to image your C: drive to the C: drive (or to another partition if one is present). I haven't tried imaging to the C: drive with ghost32.exe but it can be done with Ghost 10. Then boot into Windows and burn the image to your DVD. As your computer is program free I'd expect the image to easily fit on one disc. Then delete the image file from your C: drive.

There are other workarounds if ghost32.exe won't write to the C: drive.

Title: Re: Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
Post by El_Pescador on Oct 20th, 2006 at 7:13pm

adrian wrote on Oct 20th, 2006 at 12:26pm:
"... I need to image my "factory" configuration on to the laptop's optical drive before I install anything (including Ghost 10)..."

My bad!  It slipped my mind that for Ver 8.2 to write to an optical drive you woud need ghostcdr.dll enabled.  Check out thread at URL below:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1147910755;start=0#0

EP :'(

Title: Re: Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
Post by Brian on Oct 20th, 2006 at 8:45pm
adrian,

I just checked and you can't image the C: drive to C: drive with ghost32.exe.

But this does work. Download snapshot.exe (not setup.exe) from here. It's one of my favourite apps and is only around 190 KB. There is a one month trial but this only applies to creating images. It will restore indefinitely. Don't worry about the restore aspect, we can talk you through that if it's ever needed.

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/down.htm

It doesn't need to be installed. It will run from a floppy, USB thumb drive, CD or HD. I suggest copying snapshot .exe to your C: drive and just double click. It's the easiest program to run. In Advanced, make the Maximum image single file size = 4400 MB. Put a tick in Test image after backup. The rest is so straight forward.

Image the C: drive to the C: drive.


PS (Edit)      Make the Maximum image single file size = 2000 MB in case your burning prog has trouble with large files.

Title: Re: Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
Post by Brian on Oct 21st, 2006 at 5:20am
I forgot to ask whether you have an external HD or whether you have your laptop networked to your desktop.

It doesn't matter if the answer is "no" but you could write your image to these sites if they are available.

Title: Re: Ghost 10 Newbie Needs Help!
Post by adrian on Oct 21st, 2006 at 5:03pm
Brian, thanks for taking the time to look into and clarify this for me. Much appreciated!

I actually don't have an external HD that I can plug into my laptop at the present and I'd like to get a "clean" image (i.e., before I add my networking software etc), so your suggested Snapshot solution looks like my best best. I'll give this a try and thanks again.

Adrian

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