Vista and Norton Ghost 2003 (not)

I ran straight into a brick wall with this combination. I've been using (and swearing by) Norton Ghost 2003 for years to backup and
restore my hard drives, right from my Windows 98 days to Windows XP. But in the last month I've installed Windows Vista Home
Premium on a test machine and using NG2003 I did one backup (to image file) of the very first virgin install, and another backup
(again to image file) on a fully setup Vista install. Because I'm only testing I did not activate the installation. Today I got the
dreaded blue screen of death (dodgy driver update I think) so I went for a restore using the NG2003 floppy boot disc but it didn't
work. After the restore had finished I rebooted the machine but the bootup screen stops early and says:

----------------------
Windows failed to start.A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1) Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer
2) Choose your language settings and then click Next
3) Click 'Repair your Computer'.

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

File: \windows\system32\windload.exe

Status: 0xc000000e

Info: the selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.
----------------------

I tried restoring both of the two different backups I had - but I got the same reboot screen.
So I then tried a different hard drive, again trying both of the backup images - but I got the same reboot screen.
I'm thinking maybe Vista uses a file system that is beyond the capabilites of NG2003 but thats only a guess.

So if it transpires that my Norton Ghost days are over, can anyone recommend a good imaging/cloning program that will work with
Windows Vista drives and also work from a boot floppy? I don't like doing backups from Windows, I like a good old fashioned boot
floppy.
Thanks for any help.

Hi,

Only Symantec's Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 is compatible with Vista.
http://www.symantec.com/smb/products...gmt&pvid=ghost

Ghost is in beta testing for Vista as I write this message. It should be
released soon. Not sure, but if you have a recent version of Ghost and a
valid install key, you should be able to get a free upgrade. Keep watching
the Symantec website for details. They have already released some
updates/upgrades for Norton Anti Virus and other programs.

I also used ghost for many years, but I really like Vista Complete PC Backup
and Restore...instead od plopping in a floppy, just plop in the Vista DVD....

Complete PC Backup feature only available on certain versions of Vista, I
think Ultimate and Business Vista but works great....

I restored Vista Vith Ghost 2003 successfully. It does require some work
around depending on how your system looks like:
- You are a single booter, meaning that you have only Vista Installed
on drive C:
- Your are a Dual booter, having XP on drive C: and Vista on another
drive (V: in my case)
I have the dual boot configuration which I tested and found to work. I
did not test the single boot configuration, saw some reports of people
who did and claimed that it worked. The drawback of a single boot
configuration is that with dual boot you can boot into XP, perform the
necessary work around on Vista and then boot into Vista. In single boot
you depend completely on the Vista repair facilities. Again I did not
test this but I belive that performing repair as the error message
suggest will solve the problem and repair the system.

In dual boot configuration there are 2 things to watch for and work
around before booting into Vista.

1. Vista ( and I thing even XP) are disk signature sensitive meaning
that your disk signature data in the registery as restored by Ghost 2003
is outdated. Consequently Vista Invalidates your BCD data and marks your
vista boot device as unknow.

2.Yow want your original Vista to be installed on a Drive that is next
in mount order. That means that if you Inseert a new disk to the system
to install Vista on the system assigns automatically a drive letter to
your disk (say I:). If you installed Vista on that drive, devices D-H
must exist on your system while you restore and boot Vista succcessfully
for the first time. This because Vista reconfigures the device letter
in its registery upon ite first boot to the next available device letter
and if any of the D-H devices are missing it will assign a letter
different from the letter the system was installed on. Without a
workaround, you will be able to boot but not to log in.

To perform a restoration, you either boot from your Ghost 2003 floppy
or you boot into Window XP and perform Ghost restoration of your Vista
drive from there (in which case ghost reboots the system to PC dos,
performs the recovery and reboots, make sure that you select boot to XP
and not to Vista).
When booted into XP you do 3 things:
1.Check that the Vista drive is assigned its original letter. If not
use "manage" to change the letter to the original letter.

2. Inpect and repair you BCD data by running the vista BCDEDIT command.
You must give the full cpmmand path starting from the Vista drive
(I:\Windows\system32\BCDEDIT if Vista is installed on I:). Check that
for your Vista boot record (identified as {DEFAULT} on my system) the
parameter device and the parameter osdevice are asigned the value
"partition=I:" (if I: is your Vista drive). chances are that they are
assigned the value unknow in which case use the BCDEDIT /Set syntax to
modify the value.

3.In the case where your Vista drive (I: in our example) is no longer
the next in order (because one or several of D-H are no longer there)
you must update the Vista registery with the correct disk signature data
manually to stop vista doing this automatically upon boot to vista and
assigning the wrong drive letter. To do this you load temporarily the
Vista Registery Key hive into the XP registery and you copy the correct
data SYSTEM\MountedDevices\DosDevices\I: (I: in this example being the
Vista drive) from the XP key to the Vista Key. This is how you do this:
a. run regedt32.exe
b. select HKEY_USERS and from the Registery menu select load hive
c. In the File selection window select
I:\Windows\System32\Config\SYSTEM
d. The next notice asks you for a Key value chose a non existing name
such as TEMP_VISTA_SYSTEM. As a result you have now TEMP_VISTA_SISTEM as
a brunch of HKEY_USERS
e. copy the data (binary modification) from
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices\DosDevices\I: to
HKEY_USERS\TEMP_VISTA_SISTEM\MountedDevices\DosDevices\I: use the edit
modify binary menu item to do this.
f. unload the TEMP_VISTA_SISTEM hive. (select it and chose unload hive
from the file menu).

After this you are pretty much ready to go. Reboot into Vista and
enjoy.

All this sound much and complicated and it took me a while to set it
sorted, most of it is google research work I found 'Moving an Entire
Installation' (http://winhlp.com/WxMove.htm) a helpful starting point
with some good references for details

To the question whether all this is worth the bother, why not use the
Vista Backup and restore instead?

I have 4 reasons for that

1. Ghost 2003 is nice, its a shame to just let it go.
2. Vista backup and restore will not find your DVD based backup unless
you insert the DVDS in the revered order (last DVD inserted first)
3. Vista Backup and restore forces you to resdtore into the exact same
disks, something that in many cases you cannot do:
- I must have at least one verifyed backup. To verify a backup I will
not restore it to my original disks and have them destroied leaving me
with noting, I will remove my original disks and connect test disk
instead. These are my older disks they are smaller they have enough
space for the backup. With Vista Backup and Restore I cannot use them
- The scenario that your disk broke down and you use a new disk.
Chances are that you will have a bigger disk now because your original
40g disk is no longer available. Some people reported that Sita Backup
and Restore wont accept the bigger disk neither, so now you have to
partition this disk and create a smaller partition on that disk exect
like your original. Not something you want to be doing.
- Vista Backup and Restore will restore both your XP and Vista Disk. I
dont want my XP disk to be touched because this disk is fine and I dont
want to loose any XP data because of a Vista disk failure.

/Adam


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AdamBerko

I am an IT service provider. Have been using Ghost 2003 for years also. Mainly for the "boot to cd"/dos abilities. Regardless, I just wanted to say that

when you use Ghost 2003 to clone drives in vista, it will work,

but you must run a vista anytime upgrade (or other OS cd) and choose the REPAIR option.

It just takes a second to update the partitions, then boots correctly.

Good luck.

Maxeffect

Why thank you for those words of wisdom on a THREE YEAR OLD POST! Anyone
still using Ghost 2003, a 10 YEAR OLD PROGRAM on Vista or 7, they deserve
all problems they encounter!
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