Ghost Solution Suite

Preliminary:  Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 with Ghost 11.5.1.2266   Boot CDs were created with this version of Ghost using the WinPE environment.

I have observed twice so far with two pairs of identical Dell PCs, that I get the same error when attempting to perform a peer to peer copy from one PC to the other.  It is error 33000 on the slave PC, and I don't recall the error on the Master PC after responding to the error message on the slave PC  (perhaps 31000 or 30000? - not sure).

I boot both PCs from the WinPE CDs, Ghost launches automatically after bootup with no command line switches added; I select TCP/IP master and slave on the two PCs; the two PCs connect; I select local hard drive and destination hard drive; I tell it to start transferring; at this point the process prepares to start but after perhaps 20 or 30 seconds elapses the process stops before any sectors are sent with an error condition reported on the slave PC.  The error text file is attached.  After responding to the error on the slave PC, an error condition is reported on the master.  I do not have a file from the master PC.  I am using boot CDs and it defaults to X:... I did not have a floppy handy.

The first session that failed was on a pair of identical Dell Optiplex GX620s, the second time was an identical pair of Optiplex GX240s.  In both cases the hardware including hard drive size is identical on the master and slave PCs.  I Googled this particular problem type and found one person who reported the exact same scenario and symptoms as mine, with no resolution.  He ended up grabbing an image off of the master PC and did a local disk from image on what was the slave PC.  So there was no resolution of the error.  I tried all of the command line switches that I have seen recommended for this and other seemingly similar error conditions, with no difference at all, same error condition.  I have tried deleting all existing partitions from the slave drive, then re-creating one new active partition on the slave drive and trying again, with the same exact errror.

On the master PC in both cases there is one small diagnostic partition from the factory from Dell which shows up as a FAT partition of perhaps 31 MB, then an NTFS partition which encompasses the remaineder of the drive which is the system partition (Win XP NTFS).  NOTE: on one of the attempts there was a third partition which was simply an addition NTFS partition for file storage.  The error file below may have been from that attempt to do peer to peer.  We never have any problem doing local disk-from-image restores or Ghostcasting with images created from drives with these same types of partitions.  I can do a peer to peer with our old version Ghost 8 on this same hardware.  But I cannot get Ghost 11.5 from Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 to work on peer to peer transfers no matter what I try.  I think it is an issue with the newer Ghost program itself, at least on boot CDs made with the built-in WinPE which I'm using.

I've searched the discussion forums, Googled the problem, ensured that I have the latest Live Update, and ensured that the new patch 2269 does not list my problem type as being one of the issues that it resolves.

So thanks in advance for any help.

Tom McMillion

IT Support Tech, K-12 School Division

Attachment(s)

GHOSTERR.TXT   20 KB 1 version

What is the network hardware connecting the two machines? A past posting by Eugene Manko identifies a possible cause due to the type of switch or router used.  If you have already tried a crossover cable linking the NICS on the two machines, then that can definitely be excluded as a possible cause.

The other thing I would try would be to recreate the identical partition structure on the target machine that exists on the source machine.

Bearing in mind that you have success with an older version of Ghost when using the same hardware, I cannot avoid agreeing with you that this may indeed be a bug in the current Ghost executable. However, you would need to open a case with Symantec support in order to nail this down.

The 2 PCs are both connected to the same 10/100 8 port "Linksys by Cisco" Workgroup switch, model EZXS88W.

I neglected to provide one additional comment.  For what it's worth, the hard drives on both pairs of PCs did have the exact same partition structure to begin with.  When I couldn't successfully clone the slave PC from the master, then as a test I deleted all partitions on the slave PC, created one new NTFS partition and tried again (unsuccessfully) to do a TCP/IP master-slave disk to disk copy.

Hope this helps.  By the way, do we have to pay a fee to open a tech support case with Symantec regarding this issue?  Or how can I at least make sure they are aware that I am having this issue?

If you have a support agreement with Symantec, then it does not cost anything to log a call. In the absence of any agreement, there is a charge for each call, which no doubt you can determine by searching on the Symantec website.

I gather from your original posting that the operating system you are trying to image peer to peer is Windows XP.  Just bear in mind that if you do not copy to the same partition number on the target as you do on the source, then the boot.ini in the root of the target drive will need updating to correctly reflect the partition structure. However, this would be an action to take after a successful imaging, and this is yet to happen using peer to peer connectivity in your case.

Personally, I am out of ideas as this is not a function that I have used. 

Symantec employees do answer questions in this forum - you can see the employee banner next to their names, but you cannot assume that anything you post here will automatically find its way into the tech support system. I believe their first priority is telephone support.

Connect is primarily for users to help other users, so if you get to a point where you definitely need to speak with support, you will have to do this by calling them direct.