Ghosted (destination) Hard drive: Boots up OK - then restarts the PC!
After a very painfull HDD failure I purchased Ghost 2003 to make a clone of my new hard-drive for back-up purposes.
My operating system is WIndows XP pro
My hard drive is a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB ATA/133
I followed very carefully the instructions downloaded from the Symantec website:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/8f7dc138830563c888256c2200662ecd/bed35aa1282fa1a888256a1f0005f646?OpenDocument&src=bar_sch_nam
After successfully performing a disk-to-disk clone, to test, I disconnected the original HDD, configured (jumpered) the clone disk (an identical drive) as master and connected it using the original drive's IDE cable.
When switched on, the PC boots up to the 'Press Ctrl, alt, delete to log in' prompt and allows a log in. I get to see my original desktop. Trouble is, after about 30 seconds, the PC just re-boots. It reboots after about 30 seconds whether I have logged in or not. :(
I don't know if this is significant, but when I attempted to create my Ghost boot disk using MS-DOS, Ghost complained that the DOS boot disk I created through explorer (in XP) was not an acceptable version of DOS. I dug out an old Win98 2E boot disk and tried this, but when aimed at the WIN 98 boot floppy, the Ghost boot disk creation process crashed with a statement that it was unable to write a particular file. So, Unable to create a Ghost boot disk with MS-DOS, I did the deed with with PC-DOS - and this appeared to work OK.
I've been at this on-and-off for a couple of days. Please can anyone tell me what I may have done wrong ??
My operating system is WIndows XP pro
My hard drive is a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB ATA/133
I followed very carefully the instructions downloaded from the Symantec website:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/8f7dc138830563c888256c2200662ecd/bed35aa1282fa1a888256a1f0005f646?OpenDocument&src=bar_sch_nam
After successfully performing a disk-to-disk clone, to test, I disconnected the original HDD, configured (jumpered) the clone disk (an identical drive) as master and connected it using the original drive's IDE cable.
When switched on, the PC boots up to the 'Press Ctrl, alt, delete to log in' prompt and allows a log in. I get to see my original desktop. Trouble is, after about 30 seconds, the PC just re-boots. It reboots after about 30 seconds whether I have logged in or not. :(
I don't know if this is significant, but when I attempted to create my Ghost boot disk using MS-DOS, Ghost complained that the DOS boot disk I created through explorer (in XP) was not an acceptable version of DOS. I dug out an old Win98 2E boot disk and tried this, but when aimed at the WIN 98 boot floppy, the Ghost boot disk creation process crashed with a statement that it was unable to write a particular file. So, Unable to create a Ghost boot disk with MS-DOS, I did the deed with with PC-DOS - and this appeared to work OK.
I've been at this on-and-off for a couple of days. Please can anyone tell me what I may have done wrong ??
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> Would a virus be active on a cloned drive but not on the original? My source drive is working normally.
Thplplplplplplpl. There goes that theory...
BTW - does the cloned disc behave if you boot into safe mode?
Thplplplplplplpl. There goes that theory...
BTW - does the cloned disc behave if you boot into safe mode?
Before making a ghost of your original system, turn of "systerm repair", at least on the partition holding the system. To do that, right click "My Computer", select properties, then the "System Restore" Tab. Your new ghosted Drive should now work without any problems.
ASKER
I thought that before going through the entire disk-to-disk procedure again I would try the cloned disk one more time so that I could tell meyersd that booting in safe mode was or was not successful. On logging on in safe mode I got a message to say that the drivers for the new hardware had been successfully installed (what new hardware?). Then a message to say that the system had recovered from a serious error. I shut down and restarted in safe mode again and got no messages. I shut down and re-started in normal and all is good. After all my hassle with Ghost boot disks it appears that I overlooked the obvious :)
So, meyersd, there may not have been a virus, but your asking whether the system worked in safe mode was enough.. :)
two22. What a great and full answer you offered. I'm sure that armed with a more appropriate MS-DOS boot disk all would have been well.
rindi, 'turn off system restore'. You sound confident that this would have solved the problem. I didn't need to use this tip - but maybe it will prompt some other unfortunate ;)
There's 250 point up for grabs here. I'm inclined to divi up @ 200 to two22 for a comprehensive answer that is sure to benefit others, and 50 for meyersd. Any objections?
I'll close the call tomorrow. Very many thanks for all the suggestions. I didn't know about Experts-Exchange until this week .. seems I've been missing out.
So, meyersd, there may not have been a virus, but your asking whether the system worked in safe mode was enough.. :)
two22. What a great and full answer you offered. I'm sure that armed with a more appropriate MS-DOS boot disk all would have been well.
rindi, 'turn off system restore'. You sound confident that this would have solved the problem. I didn't need to use this tip - but maybe it will prompt some other unfortunate ;)
There's 250 point up for grabs here. I'm inclined to divi up @ 200 to two22 for a comprehensive answer that is sure to benefit others, and 50 for meyersd. Any objections?
I'll close the call tomorrow. Very many thanks for all the suggestions. I didn't know about Experts-Exchange until this week .. seems I've been missing out.
Glad to be of assistance. :-)
FJRMill
Looks like booting into SafeMode allowed the system to get past the 'error' condition that caused the 'Auto restart', so it went on and was able to repair itself.
I would still recommend disabling that 'Automatically restart' default setting. I hate it when the system does things--and doesn't tell me why.
Looks like booting into SafeMode allowed the system to get past the 'error' condition that caused the 'Auto restart', so it went on and was able to repair itself.
I would still recommend disabling that 'Automatically restart' default setting. I hate it when the system does things--and doesn't tell me why.
ASKER
Cheers two22 - that makes sense.
ASKER
Hi meyersd. Would a virus be active on a cloned drive but not on the original? My source drive is working normally.
Hi two22. I had already read all the Symantec documentation. It seemed odd though that when I offered the Ghost boot disk utility either the boot disk created through XP (as suggested by the Ghost 2003 documentation!) or an original win98se boot disk it came up with the error: "The version of MSDOS supplied is not suitable for using with Norton Ghost. Please insert a floppy containing MSDOS from either win95 or win98"
I have followed the link to bootdisk.com and downloaded the win95 boot disk utility. I have now successfully created a Ghost boot disk using this.
I'm out for the day now and will re-run the Ghosting process later. I'll keep you posted.