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GHOST 2003 HANGS (Read 10815 times)
MCDP
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GHOST 2003 HANGS
May 15th, 2007 at 12:28am
 
Well, it has been awhile since I had to search this forum last, but it seems I have run into a rather sticky problem and I am in need of a little help!

Here is my rig:

Dell Inspiron 600m notebook w/ 1.6 GHz Pentium M and 2 GB of PC2700 RAM
WinXP SP2 Home Edition
GHOST 2003 Build 793
120 GB Toshiba 2.5" IDE drive partitioned as such:
Logical: NTFS Vol 1 (C: for OS)
some slack space, because you never know!
Extended:
NTFS Vol 2 (D: for DATA)
NTFS Vol 3 (E: for APPS)
NTFS Vol 4 (F: for SWAP)
NTFS Vol 5 (G: for SCRATCH)
FAT32 Vol 6 (I: for OS BACKUP)
NTFS Vol 7 (J: for MEDIA)

OK, so I have the GHOST DOS executables, mouse drivers, etc. (i.e. the boot floppies) installed on the FAT32 volume along with my GHOST images (and some other handy DOS programs like PM8). I made an MS-DOS bootable CD awhile back that loads the FAT32 volume as the D:\ drive on bootup (OK, that should be obvious to the computer savvy).

Anyways, a couple of days ago I had a major hard drive crash that corrupted all my NTFS volumes. XP refused to boot, no safe mode, the recovery console wouldn't start, nothing. I was able to boot with the CD and navigate to my FAT32 volume (whoever said NTFS was more reliable than FAT32 was smokin' something). But unfortunately GHOST would hang at the start up screen. Apparently GHOST was just as unhappy with my corrupted NTFS vols as XP!

So, I whipped out my Knoppix LiveCD (which happily mounted all the "corrupt" NTFS volumes. Sometimes I wonder why I still use Windows...) and did a ntfsfix on all the drive volumes (except the FAT32 obviously). Miraculously, that did the trick. XP booted up, performed all the chkdsk for each NTFS vol and everything looks normal.

Well, GHOST still hangs at start up. Weird huh? Note, that I use GHOST 9.0 for incremental backups of my extended partitions. I use the DOS version of GHOST 2003 to image my C:\ volume to the FAT32 partition. I mention this because I do not have GHOST 2003 installed per se. I simply use a rather bastardized version of the boot floppies because I hate imaging XP in XP.

FWIW, PM8 still gives me a drive error on the C:\ drive (all the other volumes check fine). Some stupid Error 1529-information mismatch in directory entry. However, Norton Disk Doctor and XP chkdsk don't find any problems, so I am left to think that PM8 is just acting funny, google has revealed nada.

So, if anyone has any thoughts (other than a reformat) I would appreciate it. This is my last lifeline before I employ the nuclear option, although I am nervous about how GHOST is going to behave if I wipe C:\ and try to load the last image.

Thanks!
 
 
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El_Pescador
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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #1 - May 15th, 2007 at 8:24am
 
MCDP wrote on May 15th, 2007 at 12:28am:
"... I use the DOS version of GHOST 2003 to image my C:\ volume to the FAT32 partition. I mention this because I do not have GHOST 2003 installed per se. I simply use a rather bastardized version of the boot floppies because I hate imaging XP in XP..."

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1167744395/0#8
 

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NightOwl
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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #2 - May 15th, 2007 at 9:12am
 
MCDP

So, I presume Ghost booted fine up until you had the crash problem.

Quote:
I made an MS-DOS bootable CD awhile back that loads the FAT32 volume as the D:\ drive on bootup (OK, that should be obvious to the computer savvy).

I'm not sure I follow--what device or partition on what drive is being assigned C:\ when you boot to DOS.  DOS assigns drive letters anew upon each boot--it can not *remember* previous drive letter assignments like WinXP does.  At least in what you have listed above, the only FAT volume that DOS could *see* is the *FAT32 Vol 6 (I: for OS BACKUP)*--it by default should be given C:\--what am I missing?

Quote:
FWIW, PM8 still gives me a drive error on the C:\ drive (all the other volumes check fine). Some stupid Error 1529-information mismatch in directory entry. However, Norton Disk Doctor and XP chkdsk don't find any problems, so I am left to think that PM8 is just acting funny, google has revealed nada.

Well, if Ghost was booting fine before the crash, and will not load now after the crash, I would say there's something that's causing Ghost to fail to mount your volumes successfully during Ghost's load sequence--and is causing Ghost to *hang*!  So you actually have two programs that are *just acting funny*--ha, ha--real funny--right?!

Quote:
This is my last lifeline before I employ the nuclear option, although I am nervous about how GHOST is going to behave if I wipe C:\ and try to load the last image.

So, is your *nuclear option* a restore of the most recent image of C:\ back to C:\?  If Ghost does not boot, what's the plan for performing the restore?

For the record, if the problem is in the Master Boot Record (MBR) somewhere, a restore of the C:\ partition will not overwrite the existing MBR, and may not correct a problem there!

A re-format of C:\ also will not create a new MBR--so a restore again may not correct a problem there!

If you have to consider *wiping* the drive and starting over with partitioning, etc.--you will have to transfer your images off the FAT partition to some other external device--because that partition will be  *wiped* too!  Do you have a *whole disk* image--or just individual partitions?

If simple restores do not solve the problem, then you will want to be sure you wipe the MBR with a program that zero's the boot sector to be sure it is without errors.

Are you able to boot to DOS and load the DOS PartitionMagic--any difference in the error message in DOS PM?

To truly protect your data, using a second HDD to experiment on with the original disconnected and removed from the system would be the *safest* recommendation--but obviously not the *cheapest* option!
 

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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #3 - May 15th, 2007 at 9:18am
 
Thanks, El Pescador, for the quick reply.

However, I have decided after some additional research that the world has moved on, and I need to as well. Not to criticize Ghost, but in my original post that I was able to "fix" the drives using my Knoppix LiveCD. The beauty of Knoppix is it loads drivers for nearly every piece of hardware out there, so in addition to "fixing" I had network support and was able to move some mission critical files across my network that had changed since my last incremental image, in case the world came tumbling down.

But Acronis True Image comes with a bootable CD, and according to people who have at least used it, the environment is some sort of Linux distro (now, that's what I'm talking about!). There is even a version that supports back ups across a network.
 
 
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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #4 - May 15th, 2007 at 9:55am
 
MCDP,

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

The Acronis boot CD has two modes. Linux and DOS. Unlike Ghost 9, images can be created from the boot CD. One of the criticisms of the Linux mode is lack of drivers for recent hardware. The forum is interesting. Lots of problems, especially for people who don't understand backup imaging. Many of the problems are hardware related. I've been fortunate with my testing of TI.
 
 
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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #5 - May 17th, 2007 at 1:47pm
 
NightOwl and Brian, thanks for the additional info.

My bad on the FAT32 volume booting as D:\. The FAT32 boots as C:\ and the CD drive comes up as A:\. None of the NTFS volumes are visible. It was late at night when I was posting  Smiley

My nuclear option is to format the C: drive using the XP recovery console followed by booting the FAT32 volume and restoring the last image.

The more extreme nuclear option that you mention is to nuke the entire drive + MBR. There is a partial workaround that after a fresh install of XP and re-partitioning I could load a GHOST image from an external drive at that point, as well as backups of the old partitions.

But, how do I know if this will fix the GHOST problems? Otherwise I am looking at rebuilding my system from scratch and that would take all day! The whole point of imaging my C:\ was to avoid these problems!

As for the MBR being the problem, I sincerely hope not. I am well aware that format c: does not change the MBR. Is there anyway I can troubleshoot this? I have tried running Ghost 2003 with several switches like -dd, -noide, but it still hangs. Also, I can successfully boot the FAT32 volume under MS-DOS as C:\ and launch PM8, and it seems an error in the MBR would prevent this. The last time I screwed up my MBR (doing a multi-boot install of Ubuntu) PM8 went haywire.

Thanks for the help.
 
 
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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #6 - May 17th, 2007 at 2:09pm
 
Brian, good point about the hardware problems for the Linux Live CD mode. I wonder which distro of Linux TI uses? Knoppix 5.1 is the agreed upon best distro for rescue environments. At any rate, in a rescue environment, the only hardware support I would think most people would need is the ability to mount their drives and external connection support whether ethernet, USB, or IEE1394. My experience is Knoppix supports all of these without a problem and the real hardware problems involve WiFi, eSATA, etc. But then again, does GHOST 2003 support any of these? My GHOST 9 copy works fine doing incremental backups via WiFi but as soon as I do a base backup I need to connect into my router via ethernet because the router errors out at around 1GB of intense data transfer.
 
 
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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #7 - May 17th, 2007 at 4:23pm
 
MCDP,

I'm a little confused. Does Ghost 2003 work properly if you run the exe from a CD or floppy?

What brand is your router? That's annoying. Failing at 1 GB.
 
 
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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #8 - May 18th, 2007 at 5:06pm
 
I have a Linksys WRT54G (or something like that, don't feel like crawling under the desk to confirm  Wink). I only backup using wifi on my home network when I am making incremental *.v2i's of my data partitions using GHOST 9.0 within XP. I never use GHOST 9.0 to image my OS because as I mention above I deplore hot imaging XP and have heard from this forum that GHOST 9.0 is buggy (since it is a build off of the old Drive Image product), but it works fine in my experience in making incremental backups of data files.

However, the Linksys router is prone to error when making large initial backups. I am not saying it does it every time, but it is a hassle when I get a lost connection error when GHOST is 90% complete. Plus, the wifi is slower than an ethernet connection straight into the router. So whenever I have to make a fresh backup I simply plug in. No big deal.

As far as GHOST 2003 hanging, I finally deployed the nuclear option including a new MBR. Everything is back up and running although I would have preferred not having to do a low level reformat of a 120 GB hdd, not to mention the transfer of nearly as many GBs back onto the drive. However, I was beginning to worry I might have to activate the warranty on the drive (it's only about 2 months old) so I figured a fresh start was the best way to know.

Thanks again for the help. Final prognosis: well, not sure, maybe MBR, who knows! With that said I am definitely in the market for TI!
 
 
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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #9 - May 18th, 2007 at 9:32pm
 
MCDP wrote on May 18th, 2007 at 5:06pm:
I never use GHOST 9.0 to image my OS because as I mention above I deplore hot imaging XP and have heard from this forum that GHOST 9.0 is buggy

After having done hundreds of restores with Ghost 9 on various hardware setups, without a failure, I'd dispute the buggy comment. In this forum we have only heard about one or two dubious restores which I'd regard as an impressive record. Have a good look at the TI forum if you want to read about buggy software. I like the TI forum because there is always a "challenge". Many of the long standing posters in the TI forum have given up because of Acronis' failure to fix the TI bugs. In fairness, I've never had a problem with TI but I don't use its advanced features. I only use it for backup/restore tests. One of the most frightening bugs is a backup image which verifies today but doesn't verify or restore in the future.
 
 
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Re: GHOST 2003 HANGS
Reply #10 - May 19th, 2007 at 11:01am
 
My accusation came from what is probably one of the most viewed threads on this forum which never was resolved the last time I looked:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1112785045

Lots of interesting discussion to say the least, but no resolution.
 
 
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