# [Solved] How do I recover from this failed Ghost task?



## mhoydis (Feb 3, 2004)

Windows XP Pro (all service-packed and whathaveyou)
Norton Ghost 2003
Motherboard chipsets: 875p, ICH5
System drive: Seagate 160gig SATA
Data drives: 2 (two) Seagate 160gig PATA (standard ole EIDE)


I ran the wizard thingie, instructing it to make a .gho image file of my system drive and put it on one of my data drives. It went to reboot. It halfway loaded the pretty blue Norton Ghost screen, and then appears to have frozen. No progress indication appears.

After a little bit of thinking, I suspect it's because Ghost either doesn't support SATA or giant 160gig drives/partitions.

Ok, so that's established. Now I want to make this thing boot back into windows.

If I choose the "Return to Windows" option, nothing happens. The machine just freezes.

If I choose to retry the task, the same thing happens as before.

The Norton knowledgebase says to go to the PC DOS prompt and run ghreboot, which apparently automatically removes the "ghost virtual partition" and reactivates the windows partition.
If I try to run ghreboot, it seems to freeze also. (I let it sit there for 15 minutes and nothing happened).

The Norton knowledgebase also suggests manually removing the "virtual partition" and reactivating the windows partition with gdisk.
If I try to run gdisk (with any or no arguments) it seems to freeze, the same as with ghreboot.

I havn't tried fdisk yet, but I'm not sure if fdisk is up to the task of dealing with this "Ghost Virtual Partition". I haven't tried fixmbr from the winXP cd yet because I am unsure exactly how this "ghost virtual partition" works and fixmbr might just make things worse? (Also not even sure that this "virtual partition" has anything to do with the MBR.) I'm also slightly worried about mounting the filesystem with stuff that's only going to detect my 160gig partition as 137gig (maybe it'll mess the partition/data up?).

Any suggestions?

Can anyone explain **in detail** exactly what this "ghost virtual partition" is and exactly what elements of my system is changes?

PS. Shame on Norton for not warning me about its inability to deal with my hardware when running the wizard.


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## storage_man (Nov 6, 2003)

What you have is a very interesting problem. I may have to do a test later to see if I could recover from this problem. From what I understand, is that Ghost DOES change the MBR (Master Boot Record) to point to the GHost Virtual Partition. I think it actually is a file and you should see it in you C:\ root directory. I did a search on the symantic web site. Don't know if you tried this but they say to give it a shot and if the following doesn't work you will have to use GDISK. Here is what they say:

To restart into Windows 

Stop Ghost and go to a DOS prompt: 
If running the Ghost DOS client, NGctdos.exe, type: Ctrl+X 
If running the Ghost executable, Ghost.exe, type: Ctrl+C
Change to the Ghost directory. 
Type: cd Ghost 
Type: ngctdos -hide
This command hides the Ghost Boot Partition, makes the Windows partition active, and restarts the computer.

Give it a try and let me know.

Storage_man


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## mhoydis (Feb 3, 2004)

Thanks, but I've already tried everything symantec/norton had to suggest - including that. Ctrl+c (or ctrl+x) doesn't do anything. The processes just totally lock up.

If ghost does actually depend on writing to the MBR to boot into its "PC DOS", then I would assume running windows' fixmbr command would just write a new NTLDR to the MBR and poof - we'd be all set again.

Anyone agree? Disagree? I'd like to be super duper sure about what I'm going to do with this because messing up the OS/data on this drive would be a fairly significant disaster.


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## mhoydis (Feb 3, 2004)

Update: I've tried the -FNI flag for both ghost.exe and ghreboot.exe.

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...88256cf40072b4ad?OpenDocument&src=bar_sch_nam

It makes my PC speaker emit one long beep which seems to last forever (or until i get annoyed and hit the reset button)


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## Flrman1 (Jul 26, 2002)

Hi mhoydis

Did you try running Gdisk to delete the virtual partition and reactivate your primary partition with Windows on it. I had a similar probleam a couple of weeks ago and running ghreboot.exe didn't work for me so I had to run Gdisk.

Here's the link:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...=2003 for windows 2000/nt/me/98&osv=&osv_lvl=

I'll be glad to help with that if you haven't ried it yet. The directions are not as specific as the should be and some of the commands are not exactly right either. Just let me know if you want help trying that. Disregard this if you've tried it.


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## mhoydis (Feb 3, 2004)

> _Originally posted by mhoydis:_
> *
> The Norton knowledgebase also suggests manually removing the "virtual partition" and reactivating the windows partition with gdisk.
> If I try to run gdisk (with any or no arguments) it seems to freeze, the same as with ghreboot. *


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## Flrman1 (Jul 26, 2002)

Sorry I missed that.

I'm assuming that when you ran Gdisk you booted from a boot floppy.


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## mhoydis (Feb 3, 2004)

there is no emoticon suitable for the frustration involved in this.


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## Flrman1 (Jul 26, 2002)

The reason I asked about the boot floppy is because when I had the problem I tried gdisk from the Norton rescue disk and it didn't work. I booted to the fdisk floppy and deleted the virtual 
partition with it.

I see now that you said:



> I haven't tried fdisk yet, but I'm not sure if fdisk is up to the task of dealing with this "Ghost Virtual Partition".


Fdisk worked for me, however my situation wasn't exactly the same as yours. Mine wasn't freezing, I was getting a "Missing Operating System" error.


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## mhoydis (Feb 3, 2004)

How did you make your fdisk floppy? Did you make a windows boot floppy and throw the windows fdisk on it? (I don't think i have a copy of the windows/dos fdisk, where could I pick that up?)

I tried booting off an LAS (Local Area Security Linux - it's like Knoppix) cd and using fdisk through that, but it would not recognize my SATA interface/drive. (either that or I don't know how to properly mount/reference my SATA drive - but there's no reason to open another can of worms here)

Anyway - I sorta think that fdisk isn't going to fix it - or at least it won't be the only thing needed to fix it. I think I definitely need to run fixmbr and maybe fixboot off the winXP cd recovery console. My thoughts are that my MBR has been altered by ghost and that deleting the "ghost virtual partition" isn't going to negate the fact that my MBR is still all ghost-erized. Fixmbr/fixboot will write a brand new MBR, which will hopefully point to the right stuff, and poof windows will boot again. Hopefully. Either that or totally piss me off.


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## mhoydis (Feb 3, 2004)

I have resolved this problem by my lonesome.

SYMPTOMS: You have a big SATA drive. Ghost freezes, ghreboot freezes, gdisk freezes. You are stuck in PC DOS and cannot make your system boot back into windows.

THE CAUSE: Norton Ghost 2003 does not support SATA without the LiveUpdate.

THE FIX: Here's what I did to fix it!
(you will need two floppies.)

1. On another system, install Norton Ghost 2003.
2. *RUN LIVE UPDATE.*
2. Run Ghost.
3. Ghost Utilities > Norton Ghost Boot Wizard
4. Select "Standard Boot Disk"
5. Follow the instructions, making a standard ghost disk.
6. Edit the Autoexec.bat on the floppy, removing the last line "GHOST.EXE"
7. Open Explorer/My Computer and navigate to Ghost's program directory (C:\Program Files\Symantec......)
8. Copy gdisk.exe, ghreboot.exe, ghstwalk.exe and ghwrap.exe to the floppy.
9. Boot the affected system with the Ghost Boot Floppy we made.
10. When it's done booting off the floppy, replace it with the 2nd floppy.
11. cd ..
12. ghreboot
13. Pop the floppy out before it reboots!
14. Send me flowers/money.

(PS. As a precaution, I'd skip the Disk Check windows might want to do when it comes back up the first time around. I don't really have a good reason for suggesting that, other than I like to make sure everything's still in tact before letting windows move stuff around like that.)


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## Flrman1 (Jul 26, 2002)

Good job! :up:

Thanks for posting the solution. It may come in handy.


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## giantboog (Oct 28, 2004)

Dell 4600. SATA 120 HD. Norton System Works 2003. Windows XP SP2.

Ghost was not updated from Live update at all.

I created two partitions on the hard drive. one OS and one Data. for a total of 3 partitions.

Dell Utilty Hidden Partition: OS NTFS Parition: Data Partition.

I ran the Ghost wizard from Windows XP. Wizard Prompted me to mark the hard drive to be compatible with Ghost. I chose yes.

I chose "High Compression" from advanced settings.

Finished off the wizard and rebooted into PC-DOS.

The Ghost GUI would freeze with an hour glass. There would be no blue progress bar.

After 5 - 10 minutes of no progress. I would reboot.

When choosing, from PC-DOS, to boot into windows off of a failed ghost the system would hang with a blinking cursor ' - '

So tomorrow I will try the above fix. 

I suppose that one floppy is the a bootable floppy from an updated Ghost 2003 and the second floppy will hold the other utilites gdisk.exe, ghreboot.exe, ghstwalk.exe and ghwrap.exe.

Keeping my fingers crossed.


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## mdx (Jan 7, 2005)

mhoydis thanks so much for this!
spent all of this morning sorting this but creating the floppies worked good
only extra thing was it wouldnt run pcdos so had to create 95/98 startup disc first


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## sambucaa (Jul 17, 2005)

I've just spent the past day puzzling over whether or not to get windows to fix my mbr to solve this and have finally seen the light!

If I had any money, you would be welcome to it MHoydis!

Just one thought...

After updating ghost, did anyone try to use it again?


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## dpmcmull (Apr 3, 2007)

Norton no longer provides updates for Ghost 2003. You must go here to enable archived updates.


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## cazgas63 (May 2, 2007)

mhoydis said:


> I have resolved this problem by my lonesome.
> 
> SYMPTOMS: You have a big SATA drive. Ghost freezes, ghreboot freezes, gdisk freezes. You are stuck in PC DOS and cannot make your system boot back into windows.
> 
> ...


Can i create this with a CD as i have no floppy

Thanks
Caz


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## almen (Oct 20, 2007)

I had the blinking cursor after Ghost locked up and restarted.
I solved booting with a win98 CD and typing FDISK /MBR to replace the MBR that Ghost modified.
Hope this helps


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## ozgurerdogan (May 8, 2007)

Would it be possible to add scheduled task to window to backup ghost images?


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