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L0KI

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Bootable Ghost CD and Nero
Apr 25^th, 2006 at 9:51pm

Hi All,

I'm trying to make a bootable CD with nero that has ghost (2003) on it, so I can boot to it and back up my single NTFS hard drive.

Creating the bootable CD *seems* to go fine but when done and I boot to it, the files I've copied to (like ghost.exe) are not there.

Here are the steps I've followed.

1) create a bootable floppy with XP Pro by formating in windows and checking the option to make bootable.

2)use nero to make a bootable CD and check the option to get system files from my A: drive

3)nero then asks me to select any other files I want to copy to the CD, so I pick ghost.EXE

4)burn the CD

5)boot to CD

6)PC boots to the CD but there are only DOS system files visible.

any help would be greatly appreciated. This might be old hat to some of you but its all greek to me! I did try searching the forum on terms like bootable nero ghost but all the threads lookedlike they had to do with other problems than the one I'm having...

Thanks in Advance
L0KI

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Re: Bootable Ghost CD and Nero
Reply #1 - Apr 25^th, 2006 at 9:59pm

L0KI

Quote:

6)PC boots to the CD but there are only DOS system files visible.

If the DOS boot files assign a drive letter to your optical drive during boot, then you need to manually switch to that drive letter in DOS.

So, if the drive letter is *X:\*, you would type at the A:\ prompt *X:*--that will change the DOS focus from drive A:\ to drive X:\.

Now, if the *ghost.exe* is in the root directory of X:\, the just type *ghost.exe* to start Ghost.

Or....

Do you have Ghost 2003 installed? If yes, use the Ghost Boot Wizard to create the *Standard Ghost Boot Disk*. Use that floppy disk in Nero.

Ghost will already be on the floppy disk, and Nero will add all the files that fit on a 1.44 floppy to the boot sector of the optical media (which will be hidden from Windows Explorer).

Either should work! Report back with your progress.

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Re: Bootable Ghost CD and Nero
Reply #2 - Apr 25^th, 2006 at 10:10pm

WOW, nightowl! That was fast!

Should have been more detailed. I've purchased a copy of Ghost 9.x that I've used to back up my desktop PC.

In order to do that, I had to install full ghost and run the porogram in windows GUI set all the options and let it reboot and write files to my DVD. Seems to work great.

However I jsut got a spanky new SAGER laptop for work that I'd like to snap an image of before gpoing too crazy on installing software and configuring etc. In other words I'd like to get an image of the base OS +neccesary drivers.

I'd like to do that *without* installing full ghost.

I have ghost at work in order to back up my training rooms etc ( I think its ghost 2003 but not sure) we run that off of bootable floppies so I know its small enough to fit (in fact I think the file size of the ghost.exe is ~600Kb.

My laptop has no floppy, so my thought was to make a bootable CD with this ghost.exe on it and do that.

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Re: Bootable Ghost CD and Nero
Reply #3 - Apr 25^th, 2006 at 11:58pm

L0KI

Quote:

In order to do that, I had to install full ghost and run the porogram in windows GUI set all the options and let it reboot and write files to my DVD
.

Hmmmmm....confusion factor--Ghost 9.x should not be rebooting after you set your options using the Windows GUI--that's how Ghost 2003 works if you have installed its Windows GUI. Ghost 9.x runs from within Windows--only--no rebooting.

Quote:

1) create a bootable floppy with XP Pro by formating in windows and checking the option to make bootable.

Do you mean the option *Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk*?

Quote:

My laptop has no floppy
, so my thought was to make a bootable CD with this ghost.exe on it and do that.

Ah, the magic words!....see here:

Creating Bootable CD/DVD's Without A:\Floppy Drive

.

But, if the boot floppy will boot to DOS, and loads optical drive DOS drivers and assigns the optical drive a letter--then you should be able to switch to the optical drive's letter and run *ghost.exe* from there--if you burned to the data portion of the optical media when you used the boot floppy to make the bootable optical media.

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Re: Bootable Ghost CD and Nero
Reply #4 - Apr 30^th, 2006 at 11:26am

NightOwl,

Thanks for the well writtten guide!!

I grok'ed it right to the end when I went to burn the image.

I use NERO, and when I replaced the stock IMA with the new one I made NERO now wont give me the option to make a bootable CD from anything but a floppy

Only thing I can think of is that I'm using a slightly newer version of NERO than you mentioned in the guide 6.6 vs 6.3

I even tried to change the attributes of the new IMA file to match *exactly* the old one, but no joy

HELP!

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Re: Bootable Ghost CD and Nero
Reply #5 - Apr 30^th, 2006 at 11:43am

L0KI

Quote:

I use NERO, and when I replaced the stock IMA with the new one I made NERO now wont give me the option to make a bootable CD from anything but a floppy

Yeah, this behavior was noted by another poster--apparently the newer versions of Nero are checking the file for *integrity* or something, but the poster figured out a way to get around the problem:

How to *fool* Nero to use boot image file other than Nero's default

. See *Reply # 14*.

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Re: Bootable Ghost CD and Nero
Reply #6 - Apr 30^th, 2006 at 2:20pm

NightOwl,

Once again, thank you for the prompt reply, much appreciated sir!

Well I got past *that* hurdle, only to fall flat on my face again.

Now I make the CD and it boots fine....sorta.

When I get to the part that should kick off ghost in autoexec.bat, it just hangs. I get no ghost intro screen, its locked up tight.

Conversly if I boot from the same CD on my desktop system I get the normal ghost intro screen.

My laptop is a Sager 9750 with an AMD X2 proc. Any known compatability issues with ghost and newer hardware?

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Re: Bootable Ghost CD and Nero
Reply #7 - Apr 30^th, 2006 at 2:59pm

L0KI

Quote:

Any known compatability issues with ghost and newer hardware?

I think you just identified one Wink

!

Any idea what type of HDD and HDD controller your laptop uses?

If SATA, you might find a workaround here:

Re: Bootable cd without floppy

Does your system support booting to DOS? Look at your documentation to see if there's anything special you have to do to boot to DOS!

If you have some other boot disc that takes you to DOS--does that work?

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	Re: Bootable Ghost CD and Nero Reply #8 - Apr 30^th, 2006 at 3:06pm L0KI Did a Google search on the * Sager 9750 * laptop--looks like it uses SATA HDD controller and HDD's. Try the fixes mentioned above and report back as to what worked!
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