I have ghost version 2003.793. I have a Dell 1501 laptop with 80 gig SATA drive partitioned 60 nfts/ 20 fat32. I understand the problems with earlier versions of the 03 ghost with SATA drives so that is why I upgraded. I have used ghost many times with great success. When I try to backup to the 20 gig partition the computer shuts down and ghost trys to start then stalls at black screen. I can finally get it back to windows and ghost of course shows errors. I know this subject probably has come up here but I could not find the correct fix. The computer has the AMD CPU if that makes any difference.  I have tested the Hard drive and it tests good. Does anyone know the fix? after I have already upgraded this version to .793 . td

Thanks for your reply.
I included a picture of what shows in disk management
C: 42.17 gigs free  NTFS
D: 25.68 gigs free FAT 32
No hidden partitons
I do not have a bootable CD or flash drive but I can make one if that is whats needed. I assume that option is available in my version
Let me tell you about this computer. It did have the D drive with dells PC restore. The computer got a bad trojan that messed up the boot files and I could not use the F8 option to get PC Restore to work. It worked perfect before the trojan. It would get error when trying to use the factory image restore. I got tired of trying to fix it so I just wiped it clean and started over. I did as I always do with the partition thing and used D to for my ghost backup. It just will not get past the black screen. I am using the pc now to post here and like I said it works great. I just need to make n Image because I know my friend will trash this system in no time

That seems a little hard to do. Is there a better way of doing this or can I just buy a boot disk? I have probably used Ghost 100 times and never once had to do this. I though the updated version of 2003 would address the SATA problems? I have done this before on laptops almost like this and never had this problem before? Anyway thanks for you link on this, maybe I can figure this out, if not I will just leave it without a backup. Td

I have a 8 gig usb drive. I will have to format it but I assume it will work. How would I copy the ghost.exe to it?

Like tdee I too have used Ghost 2003 for several years with no problems, but beginning a couple of years ago I had the occasional problem when starting Ghost from Windows.  Then I made a Ghost boot CD, and I've never had a problem running Ghost for the boot CD.

Like Brain says you'll need a boot CD, flash drive or floppy in case of OS failure to boot.  I also used NightOwl's guide to make a bootable flash drive which I found very easy to do.

Ok, I tried making a bootable CD and it booted but I got write protect error writing to drive A
Abort , Retry , Fail?
I can hit the A key and I get A:ghost.exe and then it goes to about norton ghost
I hit OK
I see Local
options
quit
I click Local, Partition, to Image and I see this
Select local drive source drive by clicking the drive number
I only see one
I click it
I see select source partitons from basic drive :1
I choose 1 Primary
I got to next windows and I see file name to copy image to
Under Look in I cannot see my D partition
I can only choose 1:1 NTFS
CD-R1 TssT corp CDRWDVD
A: Local drive
B:Local drive
C:Local drive

Where did I go wrong?
Tdee

I think I've worked it out. As your Backup partition is FAT32 it is showing in Ghost as C:Local drive

Try a backup to C:Local drive and when you boot into WinXP you should see the .gho files in your D: drive.

If D: drive had been NTFS it would have appeared in Ghost as 1:2 NTFS

I prefer NTFS.