Ghost Solution Suite

Using boot CD (PC DOS) created in GSS 2.0 - unable to boot

I created a boot CD - vanilla - no switches - selected PC DOS - using the boot wizard found in Ghost Solution Suite 2.0.  The boot order in setup has the CD-ROM drive selected as the first boot device.  The drive is a Sony DVD RW but has CD RW capabilities.  In setup it shows as a Secondary IDE Slave - ATAPI CDROM.  Upon boot the drive light flashes briefly and then

Boot failure

displays with the cursor blinking at the end of the message.

I would prefer to solve this using a CD.  What might I try to fix this?

Thanks for your help.

We don't actually know where the problem lies based on your limited information - it could be either a hardware or a software issue.

Have you tried your GSS 2.0 CD creation in another machine? Does it fail there also?

Does your test machine boot successfully from another CD - for example an operating system installation CD?

Do you have another optical device as secondary IDE master?  It is not uncommon to find that ATAPI optical devices are incorrectly jumpered. If it is the only device on the secondary port, then it needs to be configured as master.

Was the CD burned using the same drive that is now trying to boot the CD ?

The vanilla boot CD (detailed in the first post) successfully booted in another computer.

I was able to boot the computer (the one in the first post) from an OS CD (XP Pro, SP2) in the same drive.

The CD was burned using a different drive than is now trying to boot the CD.

I did have a device that was a secondary IDE master.  It was easily disconnected and I changed the jumper to make the CD drive in question the secondary IDE master.  Attempting a boot from the Ghost CD resulted in the same message - "Boot failure".  Just to make sure, I booted the XP CD again and, again, it worked.

In case this might apply, my device setup is:

Primary IDE Masater              Hard Drive

Prim IDE Slave                      Hard Drive

2ndary IDE Master                 ATAPI CDROM (the drive in question)

2ndary IDE Slave                   None

3rd IDE Master                      Hard Drive

3rd IDE Slave                        None

Mode of 3rd Channel              [IDE/Level]

The boot priority is: 1st ATAPI CDROM, 2nd Remoable Device, 3rd Hard Drive

Thanks for your help troubleshooting this.

Hello,

Please try to create ISO image of boot package and burn on CD or DVD via third party tool. (e.g.Nero). I suspect the boot package is not properly written on the media and hence it is failing to boot. Please try and let us know.

I will try what you suggest when I get home tonight (where all the hosts and software involved are located) but, the bootdisk-wizard-created CD was able to boot on that other machine.  Might it be something related to my trying to boot the Ghost CD on a DVD/CD drive?  There's the evidence that the XP CD was able to boot on this same DVD/CD drive but I was thinking there might be something about the Ghost CD that makes the boot sectors unreadable by the DVD drive. 

I am pretty sure that we have excluded any basic configuration issues, but it is highly likely that the optical drive that is unable to read your boot CD has some issue with reading the media you have created. Either there is an alignment problem (optical writers are better at handling this than most read-only drives, as their mechanisms are built to higher standards. More likely is a problem reading the media that was used to burn the CD. Commercially mastered CDs are probably the most readable and clearly your drive is able to read the operating system disk you tried. With write once or rewriteable media, the optical drive goes through a calibration process to adjust the laser light for optimum performance, but some media can fall outside the range of adjustment that some drives are capable of. Cheap media can also have surface defects that some drives can recover and others cannot - in bad cases you can see the defects visually.

It may be as simple as just burning another boot CD using different media, or on a different burner. Since your first attempt boots OK on another machine, I doubt very much that there is anything fundamentally wrong with the content of the CD.

I've tried buring to new media and got the same error.  I tried booting both pieces of media on a third computer and got the same "Boot failure" error.  Is there a specific brand of CD that is known to be of a good enough quality to avoid the pitfalls we suspect?

Media can sometimes be an issue, but if you have tried different media and still encounter the problem, then maybe your burner has an issue?