Ghost Solution Suite

We are using Ghost 8.2 to image XP, SP2. I have encountered the following error on 2 laptops and wondered if anyone else has seen this or has a suggestion to get around it.

I am attempting to re-image a HD, select my image file and then click OK to start the process, when the error appears.

File Name ? (546)

Output error file to the following location
A:\ghosterr.txt

I've tried redirecting this, but with no luck.

thanks
Frank

At this point it has encountered an error that it wants to report, but it can't open the normal error file for some reason - the file has to be on a FAT-formatted volume, and by default it writes to whatever drive and directory Ghost is being run from. If it can't open the default logfile (if e.g. you boot from a floppy with the write-protect tab set) then it is supposed to open a message box where you can type in an alternative file name to write the error to.

Regular command-line redirection won't work, but you can tell Ghost an alternative location on the command line using the -afile= command-line switch - if you're using a drive-mapping boot CD or PXE image, it might be a good idea to set up -afile to point at a network share that is open for writing.

I used the -afile=filename switch and then received a "internal error 36000, an internal inconsistency has been detedtec"

does any one know if this means the HD is bad?

> does any one know if this means the HD is bad?

Usually not. 36000 is the catch-all code for Internal Bad Things, and most of the time the root cause of those Internal Bad Things is a bug in the code. It has happened in the past that things like bad sectors have eventually caused the program to fail internally in this way, but it's not supposed to happen - bad sectors are supposed to result in an explicit "bad sector" message so you know what to do about it, not some generic error like this.

So, you can pretty much assume that 36000 means a bug in the code, even if the bug is just that we're not handling some other error in a robust manner.

When you specified the -afile switch, the program could write to that file a trace of all the internal diagnostic stuff that we need to work out exactly what went wrong, and if you could get that file and post the content here we may be able to work out what the trigger cause was.

Here's the error file, thanks for your help.

Date : Wed Nov 08 14:09:54 2006
Error Number: (36000)
Message: A GeneralException occurred
Version: 8.2.0.1117 (Aug 26 2004, Build=1117)
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (Build 2600)
Command line arguments: -afile=j:
Active Switches :
AutoName
PathName :
DumpFile : J:\Images\Laptop\PROD\HP6KXP.GHO
DumpPos : 2560
Last LFO Buffersize : 32768
Last LFO Path :
Full Path : J:\Images\Laptop\PROD\HP6KXP.GHO
Drive Letter : J:\
Last LFO Filesystem : Native
FlagImplode : 0
FlagExplode : 0

Operation Details :
Total size.........0
MB copied..........0
MB remaining.......0
Percent complete...0%
Speed..............0MB/min
Time elapsed.......0:00
Time remaining.....0:00

Assertion failed
ReadBiosParameterBlock(idix, pe)==0
Generated at dcfat.cpp:5775

Program Call Stack
CheckFatPartition
CheckPartition
AddAPartition
LoadPartitionInfo
NormalGetAllPartInfo
GetAllPartInfo
GetDriveData
removeFilesystemsOnDisk
CopyFileToDisk
CopyMainline
AttemptOperation
sub_main
main

Call Stack
Address Frame Logical Addr Module
0x000000007c90eb94 0x000000000012ee64 KiFastSystemCallRet+0x0000000000000000
0x000000000012f154 0x0000000000000003 0x0000:0x0000000000000000
End Call Stack


Start heap available: 61878272
Cur heap available: 60198912
Total Memory: 133677056

Conventional Memory
Inital Conventional Memory Size = 0
Current Conventional Memory Size = 0
Allocated
33500 ghost.cpp:1268
Free
32768 AlignBufferedImageFileDevice.cpp:83

Fat details:

NTFS details:
----------------

NTFS Global Flags:
----------------
contiguousWrite=1 forceDiskClusterMapping=0
inhibitCHKDSK=1 ignoreBadLog=0 ignoreCHKDSKBit=0
enable_cache=0 xfrbuflen=0
last_attr_type = 0
loadExact = 0
----------------

Disk Info :
remote.............0
drive..............0
sectors_used.......45297
estimated_used.....0
pemax..............1
Version............820

# Ord Boot Id Ext First Num Last Used NTFS
0 0 0 a0 No 00000063 00045297 00045360 08246352 No

Disk Info :
remote.............0
drive..............0
sectors_used.......19625760
estimated_used.....0
pemax..............1
Version............0

# Ord Boot Id Ext First Num Last Used NTFS
0 0 80 7 No 00000063 19625697 19625760 08246352 Yes

Fixed Drives

Drive 0 IBM-DJSA-210 42V2YPH5072
WinNT (Active)
Total Sectors 19640880
Bytes per Sector 512
MB 9590
Cylinders 1299
Heads 240
Sectors per Track 63
Successful IO Count 121

Floppy Drives

Remote Drives
AsyncIo : 0
Image Devices

Key 1:2
Key C:
Path C:
Desc C: 1:2
Type FAT
Disk 0
Offset 45360

Key B:
Path B:
Desc B:
Type Disk

Key J:
Path J:
Desc J:
Type Network

Key X:
Path X:
Desc X:
Type CD

Key @CD-R1
Path @CD-R1
Desc @CD-R1 TEAC CD-224E
Type CD


*********************************

Thanks for that - I've walked through this with the lead on the cloning code, and what we think is happening is that the machine you're loading this image on to contains a hidden manufacturer recovery partition. Unfortunately, that partition is claiming to be a legal FAT partition but for some reason it actually isn't, and Ghost is stopping in its tracks.

So, what Ghost is doing here is wrong; what it probably should be doing with partitions that fail the validity checks is flagging them as "image-all" type, rather than stopping dead even when you're trying to load some other image over the top of the thing it doesn't like :-(

What we're really like to be able to do is trigger this situation here in our test labs, so for that we really need to know a) a little bit more about the hardware so we can try and procure one with the same manufacturer diagnostic partition, or b) a little bit more about the sector that Ghost doesn't like, so we can see if we can find out exactly which of the validity tests is failing.

Probably the simplest way to get a dump of this is to load up BartPE and use Gdisk32 to get the information from a command-line window
c:\> gdisk32 1 /view:63
should produce a dump of the sector in question, which you can redirect somewhere and post for us. Gdisk32 (or for that matter the Windows disk manager) should also allow you to delete the manufacturer's diagnostic partition if necessary, which right now is probably the easiest way to get Ghost to proceed and allow you to load a new disk image over the old one.

The laptop in questions is a HP OmniBook6000 to be used for DR

The output of the gdisk32 is:

Physical Disk 1, Sector 63:
---------------------------------------------------------
00000000 eb 3c 90 4d 53 44 4f 53 35 2e 30 00 02 04 01 00 .<.MSDOS5.0.....
00000010 02 00 02 00 80 f8 20 00 3f 00 f0 00 3f 00 00 00 ...... .?...?...
00000020 00 80 00 00 80 00 29 e1 13 2c 17 4e 4f 20 4e 41 ......)..,.NO NA
00000030 4d 45 20 20 20 20 46 41 54 31 36 20 20 20 fa 33 ME FAT16 .3
00000040 c0 8e d0 bc 00 7c 16 07 bb 78 00 36 c5 37 1e 56 .....|...x.6.7.V
00000050 16 53 bf 3e 7c b9 0b 00 fc f3 a4 06 1f c6 45 fe .S.>|.........E.
00000060 0f 8b 0e 18 7c 88 4d f9 89 47 02 c7 07 3e 7c fb ....|.M..G...>|.
00000070 cd 13 72 79 33 c0 39 06 13 7c 74 08 8b 0e 13 7c ..ry3.9..|t....|
00000080 89 0e 20 7c a0 10 7c f7 26 16 7c 03 06 1c 7c 13 .. |..|.&.|...|.
00000090 16 1e 7c 03 06 0e 7c 83 d2 00 a3 50 7c 89 16 52 ..|...|....P|..R
000000a0 7c a3 49 7c 89 16 4b 7c b8 20 00 f7 26 11 7c 8b |.I|..K|. ..&.|.
000000b0 1e 0b 7c 03 c3 48 f7 f3 01 06 49 7c 83 16 4b 7c ..|..H....I|..K|
000000c0 00 bb 00 05 8b 16 52 7c a1 50 7c e8 92 00 72 1d ......R|.P|...r.
000000d0 b0 01 e8 ac 00 72 16 8b fb b9 0b 00 be e6 7d f3 .....r........}.
000000e0 a6 75 0a 8d 7f 20 b9 0b 00 f3 a6 74 18 be 9e 7d .u... .....t...}
000000f0 e8 5f 00 33 c0 cd 16 5e 1f 8f 04 8f 44 02 cd 19 ._.3...^....D...
00000100 58 58 58 eb e8 8b 47 1a 48 48 8a 1e 0d 7c 32 ff XXX...G.HH...|2.
00000110 f7 e3 03 06 49 7c 13 16 4b 7c bb 00 07 b9 03 00 ....I|..K|......
00000120 50 52 51 e8 3a 00 72 d8 b0 01 e8 54 00 59 5a 58 PRQ.:.r....T.YZX
00000130 72 bb 05 01 00 83 d2 00 03 1e 0b 7c e2 e2 8a 2e r..........|....
00000140 15 7c 8a 16 24 7c 8b 1e 49 7c a1 4b 7c ea 00 00 .|..$|..I|.K|...
00000150 70 00 ac 0a c0 74 29 b4 0e bb 07 00 cd 10 eb f2 p....t).........
00000160 3b 16 18 7c 73 19 f7 36 18 7c fe c2 88 16 4f 7c ;..|s..6.|....O|
00000170 33 d2 f7 36 1a 7c 88 16 25 7c a3 4d 7c f8 c3 f9 3..6.|..%|.M|...
00000180 c3 b4 02 8b 16 4d 7c b1 06 d2 e6 0a 36 4f 7c 8b .....M|.....6O|.
00000190 ca 86 e9 8a 16 24 7c 8a 36 25 7c cd 13 c3 0d 0a .....$|.6%|.....
000001a0 4e 6f 6e 2d 53 79 73 74 65 6d 20 64 69 73 6b 20 Non-System disk
000001b0 6f 72 20 64 69 73 6b 20 65 72 72 6f 72 0d 0a 52 or disk error..R
000001c0 65 70 6c 61 63 65 20 61 6e 64 20 70 72 65 73 73 eplace and press
000001d0 20 61 6e 79 20 6b 65 79 20 77 68 65 6e 20 72 65 any key when re
000001e0 61 64 79 0d 0a 00 49 4f 20 20 20 20 20 20 53 59 ady...IO SY
000001f0 53 4d 53 44 4f 53 20 20 20 53 59 53 00 00 55 aa SMSDOS SYS..U.


Thanks

I would use Partition Magic to either delete the recovery partition or hide it. I would also use PM to delete whatever partition currently has an OS on it, and leave it as free space (if possible). That might get rid of the error.

I blew away the HD and re-created and was then able to ghost.

Bad partition on HD was the problem.

thanks to all