After a lot of hassles and research I managed to assemble a simple Ghost 2003 bootable floppy disk that, with a minimum of effort, creates and restores Windows XP Pro SP2 images perfectly and, as a gesture of appreciation to this forum, I thought I'd post the details for the benefit of others.

My PC is fairly basic: ASUS/AMD system with two parallel ATA hard drives (as per Rad's recommendations) and WinXP Pro SP2 on an NTFS partition.

My original 2003 ghost.exe was dated 10-01-02 and displayed "Norton Ghost 2003 Copyright (C) 1998-2002 Symantec Corp" and I was at a loss to understand why restored images of Win ME worked perfectly but restored images of WinXP Pro SP2 refused to boot past the dreaded blue screen.

After upgrading ghost.exe to the 12-24-03 version contained in the file ng2003b793_en.x86 (change the .x86 extension to .zip) from the Princeton University's server http://pcsystems.princeton.edu/nav/ the problem was solved.

I learned that the most important points to pay attention to are:
1. The disk must be formatted and created using Windows 98.
2. The version of Ghost 2003 must be dated 12-24-03.

I keep a very basic installation of Win98SE on a geriatric 1.2GB HD (the kind that sounds like a WW2 machine gun) just for these occasions.

So, here are the details of the files on my now successful floppy disk:
FILENAME            BYTES            DATE
autoexec.bat            79            24/01/2003
command.com            93,890            23/04/1999
config.sys            15            24/01/2003
himem.sys            33,191            23/04/1999
io.sys                  222,390            23/04/1999
mouse.com            37,681            14/08/2002
mouse.ini            24            24/01/2003
msdos.sys            6            12/03/2005
GHOST <DIR>
   containing: ghost.exe 1,031,428 bytes, 21/12/2003

8 Files      387,276 bytes
1 Dir      35,328 bytes free


The autoexec.bat file contains:
@echo off
SET TZ=GHO+05:00
MOUSE.COM
echo Loading...
CD GHOST
GHOST.EXE

The config.sys file contains:
LASTDRIVE = Z

The msdos.sys file contains:
;SYS

The mouse.ini file contains:
[mouse]
MouseType=PS2

Rebooting my PC with the floppy in its drive automatically loads Ghost with PS2 mouse support and the rest is as per Rad's Guide. Thanks everyone for your help.

A zipped copy of the floppy has been emailed to you as requested. Just add Ghost.exe to the GHOST folder.

PS. I found that if the files are copied to a blank floppy that was formatted by Windows ME, the disk works ... but if they are copied to a floppy that was formatted by Windows XP Pro SP2, it doesn't. Maybe one of the Ghostly experts could explain this?

Hi Sirhc.

'PS. I found that if the files are copied to a blank floppy that was formatted by Windows ME, the disk works ... but if they are copied to a floppy that was formatted by Windows XP Pro SP2, it doesn't. Maybe one of the Ghostly experts could explain this?'


The Windows XP version of a boot-disk contains no DOS Kernel, tools, nor any way to access NTFS file-systems. It's really just a way of booting the PC so that you can log-on to an installed NTFS based Windows system.

Ghost was written to use DOS - so the XP boot-disk is of no use and won't work - you need to use either a Windows 98 or Windows ME Boot-floppy, as these both have DOS support.

Can't say I've ever found a Windows XP Boot-floppy much use really.


Ian. 8)

Radministrator, I sent the zip file to your email address as given by your email icon (mailto:Admin@radified.com) but it bounced (permanent fatal errors, User unknown, etc) Would you please send me an email from your working address and I'd be happy to try again.

Thanks for your replies guys. That explains the problem a bit. I thought that if you formatted a floppy under win XP using the FAT File System and then copied the Win 98 boot files: command.com, io.sys, and msdos.sys, it should work. I guess that bit about the boot record pointing to the NTLDR file not letting a Win XP formatted floppy act as a DOS boot disk even with Win9x boot files on it is the answer. All very confusing but I'll figure out what the "boot record" is one of these days - still much to learn!

Another question: I've been playing around with bat files to automate the image file creation process as described in Rad's guide and I've come up with the following which seems to work quite well when made an AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
@echo off
SET TZ=GHO+05:00
cls
echo ---------------------------------------------------------------
echo Up to three Ghost images of the XP partition will be maintained
echo          in the Ghost folder on the Backup partition.
echo.
echo                Press Ctrl+C to abort the process
echo ---------------------------------------------------------------
pause
if exist d:\ghost\image3.gho goto REMOVE
goto CREATE
:REMOVE
echo Three Ghost images are stored in the Ghost folder.
echo Remove the oldest one?
choice
if errorlevel 2 goto ABORT
del d:\ghost\image3.gho
:CREATE
if exist d:\ghost\image2.gho ren d:\ghost\image2.gho image3.gho
if exist d:\ghost\image1.gho ren d:\ghost\image1.gho image2.gho
echo Ready to start Norton Ghost 2003.
pause
cd GHOST
GHOST.EXE -clone,mode=pcreate,src=1:2,dst=d:\ghost\image1.gho -z1
goto END
:ABORT
echo.
echo Ghost image process aborted.
exit
:END
echo.
echo Ghost image process completed.
exit
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The question is, if you use the "-clone,mode=pcreate,src=1:2,dst=d:\ghost\image1.gho -z1" switches, does Ghost mark the drive or do you still get the option to "Continue without marking drives"?

Thanks for your help.

Okay, it took a while, but I posted it:

http://radified.com/Files/

3rd file down on the left hand side.

How does the entry look? Anything I need to add?

Also posted a note at the bottom of this page:

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1y.htm

R.

I downloaded the Ghost 2003 bootable floppy for WinXP Pro but experienced difficulty booting from it.  Both IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS stay hidden (they stay hidden no matter what I do in Advanced settings of Tools Folder Options).  Is this what makes the floppy unbootable? Can someone help?
Thank you

Thought I'd found the answer to the maiden's prayer when I found the ultimate method of creating the Ghost CD.  But - and there always seems to be a but - the link for getting the 12-24-03 Ghost.exe file doesn't show a name anything like the one stated (they may have removed it from the download list).  And I'm certainly not going to Live Update for Ghost material - have spent far too many frustrating hours on System Works (at least ten clean-outs and full re-installations this year)  - the original version seems to work fine but any updates and it simply does not perform.  Any clues as to where the recommended exe file can be obtained ?  Thanks in anticipation !

Des.M

Quote:


Just had a look at my ghost 2003 executable - it doesn't give the version number but displays

"Norton Ghost 2003 Copyright (C) 1998-2003 Symantec Corp" not 1998-2002
the file size is 1031428 bytes and the dates are

created 8th November 2004
Modifies 8th November 2004
Accessed  15 feb 2007

So..........i take it my version is even newer than the ng2003b793_en.x86 version which has an earliest date of modified - 24th december 2003

and therefore..............my version shouldn't have this problem you experienced??


EDIT - just remembered the -ver switch and it's build 793 cdrlib 3.1.25!