Thanks for taking a stab at this one NightOwl. Sorry I should have noted on original post I know I can move the OS drive & image files to another computer. Was hoping to avoid that mess. Unfortunately I am one who wants to know the "why"... layover disorder from my undergrad Physics studies I guess... Does not serve one well if one hopes to avoid being pulled into the vortex of constant tinkering with computers.
RE: "Now, that's a problem--what's the difference between the bootable Ghost 2003 CD and the Symantic Recovery Disk CD?"
Ans: no difference I know of
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RE: "I do not have Ghost 9.xx, but it's my understanding you have to use the bootable Recovery CD in order to restore a broken Windows OS and can not boot to Windows. "
Ans: correct, the Ghost 2003, 9.o and the Symantec Recovery Disk [it is a CD] are supposed to be bootable... and I ran the Ghost 9.0 CD & Symantec Recovery Disk [CD] for a boot check on two other machines... they worked
Not the "problem child" though... also if you remember in my original post the "problem child" did like the Ghost 2003 & WinXP CDs and went to the "press any key to boot from CD" w/ those CD's in... but not the Ghost 9.0 or Symantic Recovery Disk.
To make it even more fun, the other night I pushed the BIOS on the "problem child" so it ONLY had the Sony DVD RW is on the boot list and I made it the #1 priority/first boot device... all other options were set to "disable"... LOL.
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RE: "Booting the CD should be completely unrelated to any installation/uninstall issues that occurred inside Windows!"
Ans: ...exactly what I once thought...
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One thing I am definitely going to write/call Symantec about is the fact that the install program, regardless of whether I try to install/un-install Ghost via the Ghost 9.0 CD or the NSW2005 Premier CD, comes back with the "cant find the 'NortonGhost902Allen.msp' file... this is especially troubling since I actually saw the file created and deleted duriing the install of Ghost 9.0 on one of my other machines [also a P4, Asus board, with WinXP SP2]
Still open to any and all ideas from anyone.....