Ghost 12 freezes at the 5% point of the backup. Winxp, 1 gig ram, WD mybook external drive as destination. This configuration worked fine with ghost 10. All programs turned off, clean boot, all usb devices removed except mybook, nothing worked. I was with symantec live chat tech support for two hours trying all these things that didn't work. What should I be looking for?

Larry, I assume it's a USB external HD and not SATA. Can you write the image to an internal HD?

I haven't tried that. This is a usb wd mybook external drive. I just got off the phone with tech support. They took control of the desktop from their end and couldn't find anything. They said to try chkdsk but when it ran at bootup it gave the message- The drive is NTFS, windows cannot gain direct access of drive, chkdsk is finished. I assume it didn't actually do a chkdsk. I checked the event log and it had this error message- Error EC8F17B7: Cannot create recovery points for job: Drive Backup of  (C:\). Error E7B70005: Snapshot error 121.
Details: 0xE7B70005
Source: Norton Ghost

Tech support said to try uninstalling and reinstalling. I used ghost 10 with this exact same setup with no problem.

Larry, try chkdsk again until it does run at bootup. Try chkdsk /r from a Command Prompt.


Quote:

Tech support said to try uninstalling and reinstalling.

Worth trying.


Quote:

I haven't tried that.

Worth trying as your USB HD may be the problem. I know your Ghost 10 worked with the HD.

Larrycleve wrote on May 24^th, 2007 at 1:59pm:

"... WD mybook external drive as destination..."

Western Digital USB external Mass Storage devices coupled with the Intel 80281EB-series USB Host Controller on the mainboard are guaranteed trouble for users of Norton Ghost 2003 which is admittedly DOS-dependent.  However, I have seen enough instances of the "hot-imaging" Ghost products acting up as well with this poisonous combination to mutter the timeworn Yogi Berra refrain, "Gee, this is just like deja vu all over again!".

Anyway, I am willing to bet that both your USB 2.0 host controller and your USB 2.0 device controller turn out to be USB NEC non-compliant.  I suspect the ominous VID=8086h will be revealed should you choose to determine your particular USB 2.0 host controller and USB 2.0 device controller specifications.  Those two tables below illustrate the relevant specifications I have gleaned while trying to ensure compatibility of USB 2.0 external HDD enclosure kits with Ghost 2003:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/El_Pescador/HostHdws.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/El_Pescador/HDDHdws.jpg

From what I have been able to tell up to now, USB 2.0 host controllers have eventually shaken out to either VID=8086h or VID=1033h - and no meaningful number of others thusfar.  On the host end of the "bridge", the useful items are in properties of only those terminal "branch(es)" on the Universal Serial Bus controllers "tree" containing the word 'Enhanced'.  On the destination end of the "bridge", the useful items are in properties of only those terminal "branch(es)" on the Universal Serial Bus controllers "tree" containing the phrase 'Mass Storage Device'.

Take a shot at revealing the particulars of both your USB 2.0 host controller(s) and your USB 2.0 device controller(s), follow the procedure below:

(1) go to Desktop and right click on My Computer;

(2) drop down to left click on Manage;

(3) in left pane, expand System Tools;

(4) in left pane, drop down to left click on Device Manager;

(5) for both USB controllers and mass storage devices in right pane, expand Universal Serial Bus controllers;

(6) for USB Mass Storage Devices, skip down to (7) - else for USB 2.0 controllers, focus on those lines containing either the abbreviation 'USB2' or the word 'Enhanced', then go to (7);

(7) right click on any such lines that drop down, then left click on Properties;

(8) left click on the Details tab;

(9) left click on the dropdown menu containing Device Instance Id; and

(10) left click on Hardware Ids and carefully transcribe the last two lines in the window, then please REPORT BACK. To be overly generous, drop down two more lines and repeat for Matching Device Id.

The image below reveals the functional USB 2.0 controller on the Macally PHR-100A enclosure (note that on my Dell Dimension 8300, I have three 'Enhanced' USb controllers listed - including the poisonous Intel 80281EB):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/El_Pescador/PHR100AAs.jpg

EP :'(  

Wow! Some extremely technical info. Thanks for taking the time to track that down. I found out why chkdsk doesn't work at boot. The problem is spyware doctor which is on this computer( my wife's) but not on mine. Closing the program isn't enough. When the program is uninstalled chkdsk works. Their tech support says that deleting ikhlayer.sys from windows\system32\drivers will allow chkdsk to work with spyware doctor installed. I'm going to try these things and see what happens. Maybe spyware doctor is preventing ghost 12 from working even when closed? Seems odd that this posed no problem with ghost 10.

Larrycleve wrote on May 25^th, 2007 at 5:19am:

"... Some extremely technical info. Thanks for taking the time to track that down..."

If and when you can see your way clear, please reveal the software USB2 controllers for both the Host and the Mass Storage device.

EP :'(

I checked the usb controllers and don't believe they're the problem. I will copy the info and post it when I get a chance. I deleted the file and chkdsk worked saying C drive was clean. Ghost 12 still didn't work. I uninstalled spyware doctor and ghost 12 still didn't work. Obviously spyware doctor was not the problem. The only thing left to try is to uninstall and reinstall ghost12. If that doesn't work I've run out of ideas other than to reinstall ghost 10 and get a refund for 12. I bought 2 copies of 12 for 2 computers and haven't tried it yet on the second computer.

I don't know if I'm on to something or if this is a wild goose chase. I googled the error message and found that backup executive would give this if it was installed as an upgrade. Apparently leftover debris from previous symantec installs in the registry caused this. As a test I used the symantec removal tool on the second computer then checked with regedit for instances of Norton, Symantec, and ghost. There were numerous instances of all of them still in the registry. I tried deleting them and kept getting an error while deleting and the entries remained. I tried doing this in safe mode and it still wouldn't let me delete them. I'll try using fix-it utilities reg cleaner and see what happens. Then I'll try installing ghost 12 on this computer and see what happens using the same usb external drive. Any ideas as to why there are still numerous norton, ghost, and symantec entries in the registry and regedit won't let me delete them?

I installed ghost 12 on the second computer and got the error message- error EC8F1172 the event monitor was not installed correctly. Getting errors on two different computers that are configured differently leads me to suspect the downloaded install file was corrupt. I'll try downloading the file again.

This is ridiculous. I redownloaded the install file and uninstalled and reinstalled ghost 12 twice. I keep getting the error that the event monitor was not installed. This happened when trying to backup C drive to another partition on the hard drive as well as to the external drive. This is more aggravation than is worth it. I'm going to go back to ghost 10 on both computers and get a refund for these two copies of ghost 12.

I finally got this resolved. I uninstalled ghost 12 and installed 10 on the second computer and did a successful backup with the usb external drive. I did this on the first computer and now it froze using ghost 10. I tried using a firewire drive and it still froze eliminating usb as the culprit. I adjusted services using Black Vipers guideline as well as SFC in case xp got corrupted. Still no luck. I used system restore to go to the point before ghost 12 was first installed and then uninstalled and reinstalled ghost 10. Finally I'm doing a successful backup with 10 and the usb drive. Bottom line ghost 12 is way to buggy for prime time. It's bad when a program that is supposed to protect you from disasters is the one that is causing them.  :(

Larrycleve, you may wish to use the Norton Removal Tool to completely uninstall Ghost 12 before installing it again.