I'm coming in very late on this but after reading 150 posts, I was hoping to find some sort of summary or FAQ of what we've all discovered wrt to Ghost 2003 and Vista.

If I read everything here correctly, it seems that Ghost 2003 works with Vista in some cases but restoring to a fresh disk requires some messing around with BCD and Vista repair mode.  But it seems there's no definitive, deterministic list of cases that work/don't work and steps to carry out.

If its really this complicated, is there any reason why I shouldn't plunk down $200 and buy Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 to get Ghost 11.5?  (I prefer to stay with a cold-imaging product for various reasons.)  Yes, I know its spendy, but its certainly cheaper than spending a bunch of hours messing around with Ghost 2003 and apparently Ghost 11.x works cleanly with no muss or fuss.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. 

lunadesign wrote on May 25^th, 2008 at 1:54pm:


About a year ago, I also did the same thing. Went ahead and purchased five licenses of GSS 11.0.1 for about $160, which is a discounted price I got on-line from Best Buy Business is a very good deal for what it offers. Both DOS and Windows versions of Ghost. Gdisk and others included in the product. Once you get the license, you will download the program from Symantec.

GSS 11.5 has just been released and I would wait for some months before purchasing it unless you are in a great hurry. By that time all the bugs in the system would have been fixed. Eventhough it is a solid product, I would wait for the next upgrade.

Probably in the interim, you may want to use 2003 or 8.2.

Rama  

Vista disk to image backup over network.

I just now sucessfully finished peer to peer backup tcp/ip G 8.3.

I booted from floppy boot disks made with g 8.3 boot wizard with ndis2 dos driver added.  Source computer was sony laptop vgn-nr110e with Yukon nic.

Target was celeron desktop booted with floppies made with G 8.3 boot wizard multicard template.  Target computer has ide hard drive.

I previously tried to do this backup with G 2003, but G3 halted and asked question 1824 image file already exists.  overwrite ? I answered yes first three times it asked, then I quit and went with G 8.3 as described above.

Does anyone have Ghost error message List ( G 3 and-or G 8.3 ?

best regards

alan

A word to the wise.......

When using different drives in different configurations and using Ghost, don't do it on a Dell with a RAID bios.  It's a killer!

I finally just had to walk away from it.
What a miserable P.O.C.!!

My first attempt resulted in erasing my Vista drive.
My second attempt, making a Ghost image to a DVD and then restoring to a blank drive, resulted in files missing in the restored drive.  The Vista Install disk fixed that problem.

I did a disk to disk (clone) operation from a 160 gig Maxtor to a 80 gig WD which seemed to work.  I used Ghost 8.3.

I attribute most of my problems to the weird Dell bios.  There is absolutely NO way to just totally shut off RAID completely.
I wish I could find a non-raid bios for this mobo.

I still have to try Ghost 11 and see how that works.

I'm glad I hadn't planned on going anywhere today.

Shadow 

TheShadow wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2008 at 8:43am:

There is a long thread on how to restore a Ghost 2003 partition image to a blank HD. If anyone is interested, I'll find it. A disk image isn't needed to make the HD boot.

On the Flip-Side.....

This thread started with the following phrase:



Anyone who knows me, knows that I like FREE.  FREE is GOOD!

Working to find a solution to the problem, I came up with something that's been laying right here all the time.  The "MaxBlast" CD that came with all my Seagate or Maxtor hard drives. (Ver. 5)

I installed "Maxblast" into Windows and then used it to make a Maxblast bootable CD.
Then I booted up my Vista system that has two Maxtor SATA2 HD's in it, using that boot CD.
They happen to be Maxtor drives, but I don't think that really makes any difference.
Working thru the easy to read menus, I selected to back up C: to D:.
It didn't take long at all, and when the process was done, I shut down the PC, connected the newly made clone as the primary drive and booted the system.  It booted just fine.

Vista must have sensed that it was on a different drive because it did load some new drivers and then asked me to reboot.  No problem,,, after the reboot everything was running normally.

This whole process took less than a half hour and was actually pretty simple.  That Maxblast bootable CD is now a valuable part of my service KIT.  

I know it's not Ghost, but it's FREE and it works real GOOD!
I do love Ghost, but hey, we're not married!!!

The thing that really bugs me is that I've had dozens of those Maxblast CD's laying around for a very long time and I didn't realize just how valuable they could be.  But, now I know.
Knowledge is POWER !!

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
The Shadow  

Symantec no longer sells Ghost 2003, and that's regrettable, because Ghost 2003, Build 793 works beautifully with Windows XP (all versions and SP's) and every motherboard that I've been able to try it on.

Due to the fact that Symantec will no longer sell or support Ghost 2003, some people have declared it "" and have put it on their websites as such for download.

I checked the offering on one of those sites, just out of curiosity, and found it to be Ghost 2003, but an older build that would not work on the newer motherboards.
Any Ghost version after 2003, build 793, will work fine for XP on most motherboards.
Ghost 11.5 works fine for Windows Vista.

I remain adamant that installing the Ghost GUI on your HD is redundant (not required) as the Ghost.exe file runs great from any boot media.
(floppy disk, Flash Drive or CD)

AND, you'll need it on removable media if your HD crashes and has to be replaced or reformatted.  You'll also need the Ghost Image files somewhere other than on your HD that just crashed.

After having a problem with the "Defraggler" defragmenting program rendering my C: drive UN-Bootable, I'm now making Ghost backups to DVD once a week at the very minimum.
Those DVD's will be self-booting ONLY if I run Ghost from a floppy disk in A:.  

That "Defraggler" program damaged my C: drive so badly that even doing a restore of a Ghost Partition Image would not fix it.  Likewise FDISK /mbr could not fix it.  Partition Magic 8, would only declare the drive as "BAD".
I guess the Partition Table was trashed.

I did a Ghost restore to a new HD from a DVD backup disk and I'm keeping that old drive as a source of bits and pieces that I might need.


Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
The Shadow