IBM finally posted an explaination for the cause of this error and the recommended solution at:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-57590
Summary listed below:
Symptom: The master boot record on affected systems is comprised of 4 sectors, as opposed to the single sector expected by Norton Ghost. Since the boot is dependent on coding contained in all 4 sectors, the system hangs when it attempts to boot to the incomplete master boot record. A "signature failure" error message may also be displayed.
Affected configurations: This symptom apples to any NetVista, ThinkCentre and ThinkPad system using the WinPE Rescue and Recovery partition; as opposed to the PARTIES partition used on NetVista, ThinkCentre and ThinkPad systems prior to 2004.
Solution: The Ghost documentation provides the solution. Use the -IB switch when invoking Ghost from the command line or within a batch file. This should be done on both the image creation. The command line syntax is, C:\> GHOST -IB
A complete list of Ghost command line switches is displayed by typing GHOST ? and pressing the Enter key at the command prompt. For further information, contact Symantec technical support.
Additional information:
If you need to Ghost an entire hard drive, including a hidden partition, use the following method:
- Enter BIOS, go to Security, and set the predesktop area to "disabled" to make the hidden partition visible on the system with the source drive.
- Run Symantec Ghost with the -IB switch when you create the image (example: C:\> GHOST -IB)
- After the image is created, make the predesktop area visible on the target system by disabling it.
- Restore the image created in step 2. No special switches are needed for this step (for NetVista only).
- Reset the predesktop area to "normal", the system may be booted normally to the operating system or to the predesktop area by pressing the Access IBM key during POST.