Had Norton Ghost 2003 for years and never used; small hard drive was almost maxxed out; finally got Partition Magic and removed all partitions, cleaning up drive; bought stand-alone 250GB Firewire drive to back up to; launched Ghost 2003 for first time, to back up hard drive to the stand-alone; on settings, I selected "Firewire Drive" in "External Storage" section of Advanced Settings dialog; clicked OK; system restarted and came up with a prompt line that says "Missing Operating System"; I DESPERATELY need help!!!  How do I quit Ghost and go back to the way it was before launching Ghost? I tried rebooting, tried Ctrl/Alt/Delete, and tried everything I know, and can't get out of Ghost...and CAN'T access the balance of what is on my hard drive...which is a TON of files and programs I desperately need daily. I would GREATLY appreciate any help anyone can offer...and please explain clearly. I am moderately proficient at using computers and software, but I am definitely not a geek or tech level. My operating system is XP with all current updates; I also have Zone Alarm & Norton Utilities on the hard drive. Thanks for your help!!

Thanks for responding, NightOwl. I would have responded quicker, but the only other computer access I have is via my daughter's iMac, and I'm trying to stay on top of necessary email replies as well as basic interaction on other projects with my office using it. I didn't have enough time available on it to reply until now.

Just so you are aware, I am totally new to this Windows BIOS line stuff, so I appreciate your patience while I learn and try to follow your directions.

In response to your question, I have an A drive, but no blank diskettes. Haven't used that drive
in years. Have a tower of blank CD's.

When I boot my Windows computer (with XP Pro) from the Ghost 2003 CD, it comes up with (what I am assuming is) a BIOS line reading: "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD." If I DON'T respond, it brings up a 2nd line reading: "Missing operating system."

If I DO press any key as directed, it brings up a screen with choices as follows:

PC DOS 7.1 Startup Menu
     1. Continue without loading any drivers
     2. Load USB 1.1 drivers
     3. Load USB 2.0 drivers
     4. Load Firewire drivers
     5. Load ZIP/JAZ drivers

Enter a choice:

And at the bottom of the screen it reads:

F5=Bypass startup files
F8=Confirm each line of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXE.BAT [N]

If I enter the number 1 as my choice, it spells out all of the details of the CD1 drive, then shows that the Mouse and CD2 drivers are not found/installed. It then shows the following:

Drive D: = Driver CD1 unit 0
Drive E: = Driver CD1 unit 1

It then shows the "A" drive prompt line as: A:\>

How do I get past this prompt, since I obviously don't have a diskette to use? Finally figured out that  by holding down the CTRL and COMMAND keys, then pressing ENTER, it brings it to the next blank line without the "A" drive prompt.

Following the directions from Symantec's "How to restart  the computer into Windows if a problem is encountered after running Ghost 2003", I typed D: , then pressed ENTER. Now I am one step further than the other day. It brought up the following line:

D:\>

I presume this is the D drive prompt line for the CD/DVD drive (that now has the Ghost 2003 CD in it).

What do I type here? I tried to type the next line as indicated on Symantec's guide without success. I tried every possible combination I can think of after the D:\> prompt, including:

gdisk l /status
gdisk 1 /status   (in case this was the number 1 instead of the letter L)
gdisk l/status
gdisk 1/status
gdiskl/status
gdisk1/status
D:\gdisk l /status
D:\gdisk 1 /status
D:\gdisk l/status
D:\gdisk 1/status
D:\gdiskl/status
D:\gdisk1/status

and I even tried advancing to a new blank line, inserting each of the above possibilities listed above without success. Each time it came back to the D:\> prompt line.

So......I am NOT knowledgeable on this BIOS stuff. Are you willing to help from here, PLEASE? Thank you!!!!! 

Wrote down your response off the iMac screen. On the Windows system, booted up with Ghost 2003 CD in drive D. Tried everything you said and it wouldn't work. Right before I began to reply to you, I thought about trying one last time -- this time without the asterisks -- and of course it worked. Sorry! I told you I wasn't familiar with this BIOS stuff. I took your response literally, typing in the commands with the asterisks before and after the commands. And of course that didn't work. Anyway, at the D:\> prompt I typed *dir*  , it took me back to the D:\> prompt again, and the 2nd attempt worked, bringing up the menu. There was a *support* sub-directory, so at the D:\>support> prompt, I typed *cdsupport* and ENTER (as you suggested) only to get the BAD COMMAND response. Tried it again with a space between CD and SUPPORT, and it brought up the support menu.

There was a *ghost* sub-directory, so I typed *cd ghost* (as you indicated), followed by ENTER, to change to that sub-directory. It wouldn't accept that. The menu listed four EXE files: gdisk, ghost, ghreboot, ghstwalk. So instead of *cd ghost*, I typed *ghost*, which brought me to the Norton Ghost 2003 screen, with choices for: LOCAL, OPTIONS and QUIT. I bounced through all of the possibilities and tabs here, but saw no help.

Back at the D:\>support> prompt, I tried typing GHREBOOT, and the system restarted, but came back to the same MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM response.

Now what? Is there possibility a way to just forget about Ghost, rebooting from my XP Pro CD? How will this affect my files and other programs on the drive? If this is a possiblity, exactly how do I do that without wiping my hard drive on a clean restore?  And if this is a possibility, would this permit my system to then restart in XP, effectively overriding or ignoring the Ghost loop. I could then simply drag and drop my files onto the stand-alone FireWire drive as a back-up.

If this isn't a possibility, would you be so kind as to explain what to try next?

By the way, out of curiosity I also went to GDISK from the EXE menu. The results were as follows: GDisk (W) Fixed disk 1 has overlapping drives; Disk: 1 Partitions: 2 Cylinders: 3722 Heads: 255 Sectors: 63 Mbytes: 29198.0 Model: Samsung SV3063H

Thanks again for your patience and help! Much appreciated!

OK...I hope I didn't make things worse. got back to point of typing *gdisk.exe 1 /status*

First partition is #1, had NO status showing, is Primary, has NO label, is 29GB+, at 99%, and system is NTFS/HPFS.

I thought if it had NO status that it meant it was hidden.

Partition 2 was "A" (Active), Primary, also had NO label, is 7.8M, at <1%, and is FAT16.

Typed *gdisk.exe 1 /hide /p:2* then enter. Checked status and it had changed to "H" for status. (This immediately made me wonder if it should have been blank, since P:1 was blank rather than "H"...then I wondered if I screwed up by proceeding at all).

Then typed *gdisk.exe 1 /-hide /p:1* then enter. Verified and found P1 was now "A" (Active).

Ejected Ghost 2003 CD, rebooted using Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

System restarted and came up with the following line: *NO ROM BASICSystem Halted* , and that is EXACTLY how it appears on the screen. 

        Thank you VERY much!!! I am back to normal. What site do you recommend to learn BIOS?