James

Oooooooh.....an interesting one......

Lots of clues and puzzle pieces...let's see what we can get from all this.....

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Okay, using the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid)--then just boot from the USB stick--what advantage is gained from booting from an optical disc?  (Just curious!!!)

And, more *just curious* questions--

--how big is the USB boot partition?

--what format  is on the USB stick--FAT, FAT32, ?????

--booting to DOS?

--*ghost.exe* is being used?  and is located in the boot partition along with the other boot files?

--the USB boot stick was created by *Ghost Boot Wizard*, or manually by your or someone else?

--probably should look at the boot files to see what exactly is being loaded during boot--*autoexec.bat* and *config.sys*.....that information becomes important later when analyzing what exactly is going on when *I can create bootable image disks*!

--how does the BIOS on the system report the USB stick--i.e. is it a removable disk and the boot files are assigned to drive letter A:\--a virtual floppy drive?....or, is the USB stick give drive letter C:\--i.e. a fixed or *basic* disk?

See all the information left out of a simple 9 word sentence!!!

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Well, Ghost has been loaded--and Ghost has its own built-in optical drive drivers--so if Ghost can work with the given controller type (SATA in this case), and recognizes your optical drive as *compatible* with those Ghost optical drivers--then the optical drive should show up in the *Source* or *Destination* drop-down menus after the *@....* symbol and a description of the drive.  There should be *no* DOS drive letter assigned to the optical drive.  If Ghost's optical drive drivers work, then you don't need separate DOS optical drive drivers to be loaded.  Does this describe the facts accurately?

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Need to better understand this process for Ghost 11.5.  I've only used Ghost 2003, the consumer version of DOS Ghost--but, mostly, Ghost 2003 behaves very much in the same manner as the more recent Corporate Ghost versions.  So, having said that.....

Ghost 2003, once loaded...if you choose an optical drive as the destination for your Ghost image, Ghost will offer to make the optical drive bootable--you can choose *yes* or *no*--if you choose *Yes*, then Ghost 2003 asks if you have your boot files in the floppy drive A:\.  If you are booted to DOS with Ghost 2003, you either did that from a floppy disk (1.44 MB size)--or booted from an optical disc--a standard bootable optical disc will use a hidden 1.44 MB boot sector that gets loaded to a *virtual floppy drive* and be assigned a DOS drive letter of A:\.  So, at this point, Ghost 2003 does not care if the boot was from a floppy disk, or a bootable optical disc--both source files are located on the DOS A:\ drive--and Ghost 2003 will accept those boot files from either--the A:\ drive is the A:\ drive regardless.  Ghost 2003 is programed to create only a standard 1.44 MB hidden boot sector for an optical disc--if you used a non-standard boot disc with a 2.88 MB hidden boot sector and placed *ghost.exe* in that boot sector along with other boot files that go beyond the 1.44 MB size--then Ghost 2003 will read the first 1.44 MB on the A:\ drive--and truncate and fail to load any files beyond that 1.44 MB size--your new boot disc will not work--at least not properly!

So here's the questions:

Does Ghost 11.5 work the same--i.e. does it ask if the boot disk with boot files is in drive A:\?

*ghost.exe* for Ghost 11.5 is bigger than 1.44 MB--I think it may be around 2.00 MB +/-, plus if you add additional boot files and drivers--it goes well beyond 2.00 MB!  Now, Ghost 11.5 is newer and bigger--it will not surprise me if it has been updated to create a larger hidden boot sector for an optical disc--such as the 2.88 MB size.  You said you can successfully boot the bootable image disc on you PATA system--I assume that means you are able to successfully load Ghost.  So, quit Ghost and you should be at the A:\ prompt--type *dir* (DOS directory command) and see how big the A:\ drive is reported--should show amount used, free space, and total--what does it say?

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Just to be clear--it's not Ghost that loads drivers--it's the boot files loading drivers at this stage--once Ghost itself is loaded, then it can use its built-in drivers--but these are not loaded as a separate function--they're loaded because Ghost has loaded!

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If you see a *scan* for optical drives, then some other DOS program is being loaded by the boot files!

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Well, this is a separate command in the boot files to load *ghost.exe*--and for some reason, it's not being found!

To trouble shoot DOS boot and program load issues, you need to press F8 as soon as DOS begins to load after your system's initial POST--F8 should bring up the DOS option to load each command line one at time, i.e. *step-by-step* loading.  You can now see each command line and the load process stops after each line is carried out--you can see what program is doing which steps--such as scanning for optical drives, etc.

Try it!  What program is scanning for optical drives?  And, what is the command line saying to *load ghost.exe*--what location is it saying to look for to find and load Ghost?

Running out of room--have to continue in next post!