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bruceh -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (9/26/2007 0:25:53)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: karlislielais
1. first you need to understand, that when I did the first reboot, Ghost made a "virtual partition" (that's how I call it - I don't know if the word "virtual" is right here) and set it as primary, so every time I started PC it booted from Ghost's partition, but Ghost 2003 has some problems with SATA so it couldn't direct me to SATA HDD and boot Windows.
2. So, I used a nice, little app Ranish - a dos partition manager. First I booted PC with Win98 Startup Disk (the best thing that Microsoft has invented), when it was done, switched it with floppy discette with the Ranish's part.exe in it and ran it. When the application opens you can see a list of all partitions, how big the are etc. You can do several things - set primary partition, erase partition, hide partition etc. And here it was - the evil Ghost partition that ruined my life - I could recognize it by FAT-16 file system and ~8 MB size. All you need to do is to delete it (with "Delete" key)! And windows can boot again. Hoorey!
So, short summary:
To normally boot Windows again, after Norton Ghost 2003 has made a virtual partition that doesn't recognize SATA discs,
1. download Ranish Partition Manager
2. copy the files inside the zip file on a floppy discette
3. get Windows 98 Startup Disk
4. put the startup disk into floppy drive and turn on your pc, boot form floppy drive
5. when it has booted, switch startup disk with discette which contains Ranish Partition Manager
6. run part.exe (type in the command line "A:\part.exe")
7. find partition from the list that has FAT-16 file system and ~8MB size and delete it.
8. reboot
I just ran into this Ghost 2003 vs. SATA problem for the second time. The first time I accidently resolved myself, which might answer the question of why some people can run Ghost on a SATA disk and some people cannot. On a Dell Optiplex GX520 I was able to get it to work by changing BIOS so that the Drive > Sata Operation setting changed from "Combination" from "Normal".
Today I was setting up a new Dell Vostro 1000 and, doh, it happened again. However this time there was no BIOS setting which would fix the problem like it did on the GX520.
When I read Karl's posting, I was hoping this would be a fix for me. My first problem was that I couldn't create a win98 startup disk (without a lot of work). But one trick I have previously used is with a Bootable Ghost 2003 backup CD. After I boot with the CD, I return to PC-DOS. I had downloaded the Ranish partition manager and copied it onto a flash drive. I wasn't sure if the flash drive would be visible under PC-DOS. Luckily it was visible (my option was to burn a CD).
When I ran the ranish part244.exe (v2.44) it came up with a list:
0 MBR Master Boot Record
1 PRI Unused
2 PRI Unknown
3 PRI Windows NT NTFS
4 PRI Unused
#3 was Windows XP. According to Karl's posting I should delete #2 because it was around 8MB. However I was confused because #2 was probably the DellUtility partition which I had noticed earlier in Windows. Also there was no indication of fat-32. From what I read I thought PC-DOS was on the #3 partition, though I didn't know how. I was confused.
Then I displayed the help via F1. It indicated that "B" will toggle the Boot flag. I moved the cursor to #3 partition, typed B and an asterisk showed up next to #3. Ahhh... from playing around with other disk partition programs long ago, there was always an indication of which was the boot partition. I saved this setting and rebooted.
It worked!!! Windows XP started up.
So the trick is, on a system with Ghost 2003 that works, create a bootable CD (I used a CD where I backed up DellUility). Then with either a flash drive or another CD, burn the Ranish partition program. Run the partition program, find the Windows partition and mark it Bootable.
Hope my experience helps someone. Though it took a while, your posts helped me.
Regards,
Bruce
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