Ghost Solution Suite

I just heard that Norton Ghost won't work on the Vista OS.
Is this true !!!!

Which version of Norton Ghost did you hear this about? Remember that Norton Ghost 2003 was replaced by Norton Ghost 9 and 10, neither of which are actually based on "classic" Ghost, but are Windows-based products built on the PowerQuest V2i system.

The "classic" Ghost program is not sold as a consumer product any more - the "Norton" brand signifies a consumer product, whereas products for businesses are sold under the "Symantec" brand. The last consumer version of "classic" Ghost is Ghost 2003, but the original Ghost program is still being actively developed for business use as part of Ghost Solution Suite, which does support Vista in GSS version 2.0

Some customers have reported success cloning drives with Vista and Norton Ghost 2003 using the "-fdsp" switch to avoid problems with the Boot Configuration Data system in Windows Vista, or by using the "bcdedit" utility from Microsoft to change the Boot Configuration Data settings to allow successful cloning. There is some discussion of this at http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=181082&SiteID=1

As for Norton Ghost 9 and 10, they are not compatible with Vista, but that product line (also available under the name as "Norton Save and Restore") is also being updated with new versions that do support Vista as well.

Nigel,

I hope you can help. I'm not yet worried about cloning in vista, I can't seem to install ghost 2003 to vista. I keep getting this "wizard has been interrupted" error, and it won't install. I've even stopped my antivirus and firewall program. same error

Someone in another forum recommended getting the log file for the install, so here it is, I hope it can help:


=== Verbose logging started: 12/30/2009  08:56:43  Build type: SHIP UNICODE 4.05.6002.00  Calling process: C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe ===
MSI (c) (0C:E0) [08:56:43:817]: Resetting cached policy values
MSI (c) (0C:E0) [08:56:43:817]: Machine policy value 'Debug' is 0
MSI (c) (0C:E0) [08:56:43:817]: ******* RunEngine:
           ******* Product: Ghost.msi
           ******* Action:
           ******* CommandLine: **********
MSI (c) (0C:E0) [08:56:43:817]: Note: 1: 2203 2: Ghost.msi 3: -2147287038
MSI (c) (0C:E0) [08:56:43:817]: MainEngineThread is returning 2
=== Verbose logging stopped: 12/30/2009  08:56:43 ===

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Hope this helps.

Thanx, and I hope you are having a Great Holiday Season!

Ronjie
 

IT looks like that it WAS installed. but now my vista laptop boots to dos and hangs and the usb driver and now whenever i reboot it it just stays in the dos mode.

hangs on ghreboot too. so, now no getting back to vista.

PLEASE HELP. i NEED THIS LAPTOP BACK!

Thanx!

Ronjie

If the logging information you have posted is the entire log file generated by your install, then it definitely did not install. A 2203 error means that the MSI could not be opened, so it's either corrupt or in use by another process. A "normal" verbose log is typically 0.5Mb to 8Mb in size depending on the complexity and size of the install and would run to hundreds of lines for a product like Ghost.
Given that you started this thread with a doubt about whether Ghost 2003 was Vista compatible, trying to install it was perhaps not the best choice to make while awaiting confirmation or otherwise.

Whether or not you can fix your laptop depends on whether you can mount the laptop drive, either on another system as slave, or using a WinPE boot CD or boot USB stick.
Then you can check which partition on your laptop hard disk is set to active (assuming you have the usual recovery partition on there), and also use BCDEDIT to check how the partitions are set up. (It was much easier in XP and earlier, as the boot.ini file was the source of this information. BCDEDIT is much less intuitive).
Booting to WinPE will also allow you to use a USB device to backup any data you have on the laptop in case you need to run an operating system repair or reinstall.

Installing something that clearly states as being incompatible with your OS is not wise at all, especailly product such as ghost that clones disks and then on top of that executing virtual partition on it!

if ghreboot hangs and will not get you back from the virtual partition then there is something in your BIOS preventing it from writing original MBR back. It could be as simple as compability mode or something along the line of support for extended interrupt 13.

If playing with BIOS doesnt get you anywhere try downloading trial version of GSS 2.5, creating bootable DOS media and booting to it. Latest version should get your MBR back.

If your computer simply boots to black screen it could be as simple as setting active partition. You can boot to say DOS bootable media and execute gdisk 1 /act /p:1.

EdT said: "Given that you started this thread with a doubt about whether Ghost 2003 was Vista compatible, trying to install it was perhaps not the best choice to make while awaiting confirmation or otherwise."

I stand rebuked, and will not try something like this again.

EdT further said: "Whether or not you can fix your laptop depends on whether you can mount the laptop drive, either on another system as slave, or using a WinPE boot CD or boot USB stick.
Then you can check which partition on your laptop hard disk is set to active (assuming you have the usual recovery partition on there), and also use BCDEDIT to check how the partitions are set up. (It was much easier in XP and earlier, as the boot.ini file was the source of this information. BCDEDIT is much less intuitive).
Booting to WinPE will also allow you to use a USB device to backup any data you have on the laptop in case you need to run an operating system repair or reinstall."

And he was right. I was able to find on the net a bootable WinPE CD version and did a little research on the DiskPart command and was able to get it to bood!

I'm thrilled!

I'm deleting Ghost as I write this ;)

Thank you ALL for your responses!

Ronjie

Eugene Manko said: