hello friends ! 

here's  cashiew &  i  need  some  help  regarding  norton ghost 2003 ; and  this  is  my  first   experiance  towards  using  norton  ghost ;  so  friends  i'm  having   trouble  by  the  following  Qn's:-

1) did  i  need  to  instal  ghost 2003  inorder  to  create  a  dos  boot disk ?

2)  and  how  should  i  devlop  my  dos  boot  disk  without    floppy  drive ?   

3) and  where  can  i  find  ghost.exe  to  built  dat  dos  boot  disk ?
                                  

                 let  me  say  dat  when  i  was  searching   for  ghost  tutorials  i  got  one  ghost 2003  boot  image  file  which  i've  burnt it  sucessfully  using  nero;  but  after  restarting  my  computer  &  booting  from  this  disk  it's  GIVING  THIS  MESSAGE:

                       CALDERA DR-DOS 7.03
                      [DR-DOS] A:\>...

so; i wanna  ask  u  dat  is  this  a  valid  dos  boot  disk &   if it  is  valid  what  i  need  to  do  their  inorder  to  clone  my  HDD  from  dos ?       



             thanx  for  all  ur  support  !   may  god  bless  u  my  dear's...[font=Tahoma][/font]

I hear the complaint about Ghost being hard to use with just the keyboard, so why not just put "Mouse.com" on your boot disk and load the driver from your autoexec.bat file?
That's what I do, and both my PS2 and USB mouse work just fine.
Whether or not the USB mouse works, is dependent on what kind of motherboard you have.

When I make my ghost backup DVD's from my Ghost boot floppy, Ghost will put everything from that boot disk on my DVD, making it boot up to look just like my original Ghost boot disk.  Running the Restore is a piece of cake.  That really should be done manually, since there are so many variables in the restore process. 

After much experimenting, I found the MS Dos on the Windows ME boot disk, much better than any other dos that I've seen used.  It even comes with CD rom drivers.....sometimes useful.
I can do many more things with that DOS boot disk, than just run Ghost.

As for Not having a floppy drive......WHY? 
The USB floppy drives are cheap and work just great, on every system I've ever tried them on.
I use one all the time on new systems and I sell at least one a month to my customers who have a new PC and floppy disks they want to still use.
So the excuse, "I don't have a floppy drive" is really NO excuse at all.
Get one and Ghost 2003 can operate the way it was designed to operate.

Besides the DOS system files, all you really need on the Ghost boot floppy is Ghost.exe and Mouse.com.
My own Ghost boot floppy is a bit more complicated than that, with all my cleanup batch files, a Ansi/Color menu and NTFS4DOS.

But, to work on the new computers, Ghost.exe must be at least at build 793.
Earlier builds, just won't work on the newer motherboards, like the AMD 939 and AM2 mobo's.

Since my first acquisition of Ghost, many years ago, I've never had it on any of my hard drives.  It's a DOS program and won't run under Windows anyway.  So it just stands to reason, that it's best run from a DOS boot disk.

Cheers mates!
The Shadow 

No I've not....but then, I'm usually dealing with brand new PC's, fresh out of the box.

In your case, I'd be reviewing the BIOS settings and making sure that Legacy settings are enabled and the floppy disk is in the boot order, before the hard drive.

The USB drives I've used always boot up to an A: prompt.
So far, I've never seen it fail.
There's always a first time,,,,I guess.

Last but not least....make sure that the boot floppy is in GOOD shape.
Over the years, I've seen lots of floppy disks that will boot OK on one system but not on another.  When that happens, I try to format a new floppy disk on the system it's going to be used on.

Try the USB floppy drive on the system while in Windows and see if you can access a disk in it.  Try a format of a new floppy disk, just to make sure the drive is working.

Good Luck,
Shadow 

No Problemo, Sir Brian!

Quite often, it's just some little detail that prevents something from working the way we'd like for it to.

Just remember though, that floppy disks are not "Permanent" storage.
They can forget!  The softer the emulsion on the disk, the quicker they will forget.  Also, vibration and temperature extremes can cause floppy disks to 'forget' very quickly. 
I used to carry floppy disks with me in my Service Kit.  I was constantly having to re-make them.  One day they would work just fine and the next day they wouldn't read at all.  Go figure!

Unlike other media, the read/write head in a floppy drive actually rides on the surface of the disk, (at about 300 rpm ) creating friction and  constantly eroding the magnetic emulsion on the surface of the disk. (they wear out! ) 
Valuable data should be copied to NEW floppies periodically.

Regardless of all the problems with floppies,,,,,I still use them every day.
Every machine I own, has a floppy drive in it.

Thus endeth "Floppy Disks 101".


Shadow