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Rad Community Technical Discussion Boards (Computer Hardware + PC Software) >> Norton Ghost 15, 14, 12, 10, 9, + Norton Save + Restore (NS+R) >> Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
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Message started by lwolff123 on Jan 7th, 2013 at 9:58am

Title: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by lwolff123 on Jan 7th, 2013 at 9:58am
I have been using Ghost for years; version 15 on Vista.  Usually do three independent full restore points per week as it is used for a home business as well as other things.  For the last couple of months it has started ignoring the flag for limiting to three points and doesn't delete the oldest, just keeps going till it runs out of disk space.

Now the biggest problem - Ghost recently has started refusing to finish, stopping at the validation point near 75%, and just shows the time to finish getting longer and longer.  For reference I check verify recovery point. 

If I choose cancel the operation, it takes quite a while and while getting impatient waiting for it to cancel and rebooting, the recovery point is there, at least enough of it to use the browser and read some of the files.  I don't know if it complete or not.

I tried reinstalling Ghost, removing some recent software, and system restore, but nothing has solved the issue.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by Brian on Jan 7th, 2013 at 3:27pm
@ lwolff123

I've seen several posts similar to yours but I can't recall a solution.

Uninstall Ghost, try this for 60 days and then try Ghost 15 again.

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/new-symantec-system-recovery-2013-out-now

Symantec™ System Recovery 2013 Desktop Edition will be the big brother of upcoming Ghost 16.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by lwolff123 on Jan 8th, 2013 at 9:36am
I tried yesterday running a full recovery point without validation - runs fine.  Trying to validate after the fact just hangs.  I close the dialog box, which showed no progress, and it says the point is valid, but computer had to be restarted before the recovery point browser would work correctly.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by Brian on Jan 8th, 2013 at 1:37pm
All OK here.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by lwolff123 on Jan 9th, 2013 at 5:41pm
Update:  I now believe, based on other system issues that I have a corrupt system which is causing Ghost to hang and not validate the recovery point.

Lesson learned - If you do frequent recovery points, take a know good one and save it elsewhere so if all recent ones are also corrupt, at least you don't have to load operating system and programs from the beginning.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by Brian on Jan 9th, 2013 at 6:13pm
Check your hardware. Especially RAM. Bad RAM is the main cause of failed validates. I've seen posts where the RAM passed testing but failed validates was fixed by replacing the RAM.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=350

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=151

Different software but the principles apply.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by NightOwl on Jan 10th, 2013 at 1:03pm
@ lwolff123


lwolff123 wrote on Jan 7th, 2013 at 9:58am:
I have been using Ghost for years; version 15 on Vista.

How old is your computer hardware?

If it's 5 years or more, you might want to consider possible power capacitor problems on the motherboard.  I have personally had two systems die from *bad caps*--they were on systems built in 2002 and 2003--and approximately 6-7 years later the capacitors started bulging and leaking their internal chemicals.  (See here for more information on bad capacitors:  Badcaps.net , and  How to Identify Bad Capacitors )

The problems when that started happening were subtle and variable.  I started getting blue screens of death, random system re-boots, crashing programs, and corruption of certain software.  It was hard to be sure what was causing the problem--RAM, power supply, failing HDDs, failing HDD controllers, failing CPU, etc.

And, in some instances, it was only certain software that was accessing certain hardware that would bring on the problem--so it seemed to be a software issue.  But, looking back, it must have been that certain software put strain on certain parts of the system that taxed the power capacitors more than other software--it was still a hardware problem that was triggered by the software!

Corruption of my OS was the ultimate end point!


lwolff123 wrote on Jan 9th, 2013 at 5:41pm:
Lesson learned - If you do frequent recovery points, take a know good one and save it elsewhere so if all recent ones are also corrupt, at least you don't have to load operating system and programs from the beginning. 

When I had one of my systems die most recently from bad caps--I had to go back almost 5 months to get to a Ghost image that did not have corrupted software, and OS registry problems, before I had a restored system that functioned correctly!


Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by lwolff123 on Jan 10th, 2013 at 3:44pm
Thanks NightOwl.  I guess we will find out shortly what the issue is.  I will be upgrading to windows 7 and reloading programs this weekend.  Then I can try Ghost again.  The issue currently appears to be disk errors, but hardware is also a possibility.  Computer is an Intel MB and an Intel E6300 dual core, guessing 6 years old or so.  If my plan doesn't work, motherboard and processor would be next.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by Brian on Jan 10th, 2013 at 3:53pm
@ lwolff123

Are you on top of installing Win7 without creating a SRP?

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by lwolff123 on Jan 10th, 2013 at 3:55pm
Brian,

Yes, thanks to Radified, I do understand this.  I will be installing in the currently partitioned "Vista" drive.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by NightOwl on Jan 11th, 2013 at 1:02am
@ lwolff123


lwolff123 wrote on Jan 10th, 2013 at 3:44pm:
issue currently appears to be disk errors, but hardware is also a possibility.

Just for the record, HDD disk errors would be considered *hardware*!

When my power capacitors had become bad enough, my OS became corrupted.  I did a fresh install of WinXP that succeeded without errors (don't ask me why or how).  But, when I tried to download and install the Windows updates, multiple files would not correctly load and run.

Let us know how things go!

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by lwolff123 on Jan 15th, 2013 at 10:07am
Update:  I installed Win 7 and all programs.  Computer very slow to copy user files between hard drives.  Tried a restore point with verification and still failed at 75%.  At this point, decided it was a hardware issue.

Built an I5 and Gigabyte motherboard, installed Win 7 and programs.  Ghost 15 now works fine.

Interesting information:  I knew to install Win 7 into a partition, however what I didn't know was that I had
an additional un-partitioned hard drive installed, and Win 7 stuck a reserve partition on That Drive.  Not sure if other users realize this will happen!

So, quickly re-installed Win 7 without the other hard drive connected to avoid the reserve partition.  Had to research how to get the reserved partition on the secondary drive to delete as Win 7 wouldn't do it, even though it was no longer used.  Then had to figure out how to create a GPT drive, as it is 3 TB and Win 7 could only see 2 TB as an MBR drive.

What Fun!

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by NightOwl on Jan 17th, 2013 at 1:08pm
@ lwolff123


lwolff123 wrote on Jan 15th, 2013 at 10:07am:
however what I didn't know was that I had
an additional un-partitioned hard drive installed, and Win 7 stuck a reserve partition on That Drive.  Not sure if other users realize this will happen!

Interesting--I was not aware of that behavior during Win7 installation! 

So, there was no indication during the install routine that the installation program found two different HDDs, and that it was going to create the reserved partition on the second HDD and install Win7's program files on the first HDD?

I assume that if you disconnected that second HDD with the reserved partition that Win7 would no longer boot--because the boot files were located on that second HDD's reserve partition--correct?


lwolff123 wrote on Jan 15th, 2013 at 10:07am:
Built an I5 and Gigabyte motherboard, installed Win 7 and programs.  Ghost 15 now works fine.

Well, that certainly suggests that something is amiss on the first system!  Have you looked at the condition of the large capacitors in the area of the CPU to see if any of them are bulging on top, tipped to one side, or have brown crud on the top and/or bottoms?


Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by lwolff123 on Jan 17th, 2013 at 4:36pm
NightOwl:

During my first installation, both hard drives showed up.  In retrospect, Windows 7 installation gave me a message like, "Windows may install a separate system partition".  I guess I assumed that "may" was a canned message and since I had a partition set up, it wouldn't happen.  I certainly did not expect it on the secondary drive!  I did notice that the second time around, with the second drive disconnected I didn't get the message.

I did not try to boot the first installation without the second drive, as I fully expected it to fail.  As fast as Win7 loads, I opted to just reinstall rather than fix it.

I haven't pulled the old pc apart yet as I am still limping it along trying to pull user files from it.


Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by Brian on Jan 19th, 2013 at 10:19am
If you install Win7 into a partition (which is not Active) on HD0 a SRP will be created elsewhere. Is it possible your intended partition for Win7 wasn't set Active prior to the install?

If you install Win7 into an Active partition on HD1 a SRP will be created in unallocated space on HD0. To avoid a SRP you must install Win7 into an Active partition on HD0.


Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by NightOwl on Jan 21st, 2013 at 9:05am
@ lwolff123


lwolff123 wrote on Jan 17th, 2013 at 4:36pm:
I haven't pulled the old pc apart yet as I am still limping it along trying to pull user files from it.

When you get to the point where you can open the cover and look at things inside--it would be interesting to hear the results.

A point of order--if you have recent Ghost image files, you can use the Ghost Explorer program to access files in the image--would save needing to fire up the old system, and transferring files via removable media, etc..



Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by lwolff123 on Jan 21st, 2013 at 11:00pm
Brian,

That is probably where I went wrong, not making the partition active.  Learn something new, the hard way i guess.

NightOwl, 

I was able to load my user files from an existing backup.  It wouldn't mount, but I could recover from it

I haven't found an obvious visual problem inside as of yet, but pulling one non-raided drive out that I wanted to use in the new system and running a registry cleaner has solved shutdown issues and a ghost image of the c: drive to a folder on the c: drive actually worked clear through validation.  I tested the drive in the new system as it is the one that was very slow to image and/or copy to, after reformatting it, and it works fine in the new system.  At this point I think it could have been errors on that drive or a port problem on the motherboard.

Another lession learned this weekend (and why I haven't had time to play with old system much).  I purposely waited to activate win7 64 bit on new system to insure all programs would work.  After Adding all programs and user files, went to activate-FAIL.  Three hours on the phone with MS, being passed from "technician" to "technician" , remoteing into computer to no avail.  They offered no option just,  "I am transferring you to someone else", so i hung up and started over, activating as soon as windows loaded.  FUN WEEKEND

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by Brian on Jan 22nd, 2013 at 12:48am
@ lwolff123

This is how I installed and activated Win8 64-bit on a SSD without a previous Windows install present.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1353616159/5#5

Out of interest, a Win8 32-bit install took 7 minutes. I assume a Win7 OS would install with the same method.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by lwolff123 on Jan 30th, 2013 at 10:06am
Final Note on why Ghost hung at 75% at validating restore point.  All indications are the cause was errors on the drive being written to.  Pulling that drive corrected the problem, and a registry cleaner corrected other startup and shut down issues.  Luckily the restore points on the problem drive could still be accessed and restored from, at least my user files.


Thanks for all the good info.

Title: Re: Ghost 15 Hangs at 75% Validating Recovery Point
Post by NightOwl on Jan 30th, 2013 at 10:50am
@ lwolff123

Thanks for the follow-up and feedback--always nice to have some resolution as to how an issue was resolved.




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