Brian,

That is probably where I went wrong, not making the partition active.  Learn something new, the hard way i guess.

NightOwl, 

I was able to load my user files from an existing backup.  It wouldn't mount, but I could recover from it

I haven't found an obvious visual problem inside as of yet, but pulling one non-raided drive out that I wanted to use in the new system and running a registry cleaner has solved shutdown issues and a ghost image of the c: drive to a folder on the c: drive actually worked clear through validation.  I tested the drive in the new system as it is the one that was very slow to image and/or copy to, after reformatting it, and it works fine in the new system.  At this point I think it could have been errors on that drive or a port problem on the motherboard.

Another lession learned this weekend (and why I haven't had time to play with old system much).  I purposely waited to activate win7 64 bit on new system to insure all programs would work.  After Adding all programs and user files, went to activate-FAIL.  Three hours on the phone with MS, being passed from "technician" to "technician" , remoteing into computer to no avail.  They offered no option just,  "I am transferring you to someone else", so i hung up and started over, activating as soon as windows loaded.  FUN WEEKEND

Final Note on why Ghost hung at 75% at validating restore point.  All indications are the cause was errors on the drive being written to.  Pulling that drive corrected the problem, and a registry cleaner corrected other startup and shut down issues.  Luckily the restore points on the problem drive could still be accessed and restored from, at least my user files.


Thanks for all the good info.