I never had a problem with Norton2003 in the past so I put it on my kid's XP machine like a good mother and tried to use it.  That was 3 days ago.  I have beat my brains to get this thing back up and running.  I love your website and have tried various things through it but to no avail.

This is what happened:

Installed Ghost2003 on the machine, plugged in my Iomega drive and then ran through the options to create a clone of the harddrive onto the Iomega.  Then I clicked on the button to start the backup process.  It did nothing.  So I clicked on it again.  Then the machine shut down and came back up in the Ghost2003 screen with an hour glass in the middle.  It froze in that position.  After a long period of time I turned off the machine and then turned it back on.  

Now the machine is in PC-Dos in a partition that I can't get out of.  I can boot to the Norton Ghost2003 disk but it does not show the sub folder with the Support folder that has ghreboot, etc.  So I created two boot cds: one to boot directly to ghost and another to boot directly to ghreboot using your fabulous step by step procedures.  The ghost boot cd just locks up in the ghost program again.  And the ghreboot cd gets to ghreboot and does nothing.

I am thinking about creating a cd with gdisk on it to see if that will do anything.  Do you have any suggestions?

nightowl is the expert with this sort of problem, and he's on vacation right now .. should be back soon tho.

i suspect it's (was due to) some kind of hardware/driver conflict with the iomega external drive. i've never liked iomegas, since i had one of their zip drives.

have you seen this?

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1095438251

a mom doing this kind of stuff is impressive. good for you.

actually i'm in costa mesa now (near newport beach). where are you?

gotta go eat dinner now. be back.

you might also find this interesting:

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=10298

I am in Tustin.  My kids go to high school in Costa Mesa at Calvary.  Small world.  Anyway, any help with this would be great.  I will take a look at the stuff you sent me and see if I can figure it out.  Do you think another boot disk would work?  This rather beyond me but I like to try to fight this thing.

ah, tustin. i always stop at ruta bagore's when in tustin.

i'm playing dad the next few days.

i have never had the ghreboot problem, so not sure of the procedure. altho i've never heard of the fix not working.

try sending a pm to nbree:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?action=viewprofile;username=nbree

and see if he has any advice. he's one of the orignal developers of ghost.

disconnect the external drive.

okay

I just sent him a message.  I sure hope he can help out.  I'll keep you posted.

I made a boot cd with gdisk and ran "gdisk 1 /status /i" with the following results:

Disk      partitions      cylinders      heads      sectors            mbytes            model      
1            3           24321          255            63           190782.2         unavail


Partition   status      type      volume label      mbytes            system            usage
   1                    primary                      7169.6       diagnostics        4%
   2                    primary                   183610.1             NTFS/HPF       96%
c: 3            A      primary         VPSghboot           7.8              Fat16             1%

Does this make any sense to you?

mobaby

Wow--the forum sure looks different on the library monitor here in Duluth, MN!

I'm not where I normally keep my reference material--so I'm doing some on the fly searching, but I think this reference will help with using *gdisk* to correct your problem--sometimes on certain systems, the *ghreboot* program does not work, and a partitioning program is needed--PartitionMagic in DOS should also allow one to make these changes!

You need to make the partition #3 (vpsghboot) status as *non-active* and then make your partition #2 as *active*--once you are back into Windows, you can clean up by deleting the 3rd partition.

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

Report back with the results of your efforts!

Do you know what that first partition is?

These are the commands in DOS that I am going to try:

gdisk 1 /-act /p:3 /i
gdisk 1 /hide /p:3 /i
gdisk 1 /act /p:2 /i
gdisk 1 /status /i

I am not sure if I need the /i after all of the commands but i needed it after the /status command in the first place.

What do you think?

Weren't you just in Costa Mesa yesterday?

Hey, it's NightOwl checking in!

'sup bro?

mobaby

Your commands look okay--you can do a *status* check after each command to see that everything went okay.

1st partition is a *utility* partition--you must have a *Dell, Gateway, Compaq* or other big OEM system!  Many have utilities for checking various system functions + maybe original system software backup.

If the *status* command required the */i* switch, then probably so do the other commands.

Costa Mesa?!--No, that's the other guy--Rad!

Rad

Visiting relatives, doing geneology research at the local courthouse--looking for lost records, and missing links--hmmm--that's pre-internet missing *links*  ;) !

MY 4 DAY NIGHTMARE IS OVER!

It worked and I see windows.  I am backing up the data on the kid's computer the manual way.  Then I will eliminate Ghost from the system.  I will also remove the partition if you think I should.

Thank you so much for this website and your help!

mobaby

Glad we could help!

You can probably use Ghost from a DOS boot disk rather than from the Windows Ghost interface!

Have to sign out now from the library--be back home in several days!

NightOwl comes thru in the clutch, again.

Told ya he knew ghreboot.

I know some ppl who are big into geneology. They say the Mormom church have more resources (on the subject) than anybody.