Ghost 2003 Does Not Work

[Cuc Tu]

I have a Win98 laptop I'd like to backup with Norton Ghost. Ideally, I'd like to end up with a complete image that I could just restore from a CD.

This laptop does not have a CD burner, but I have network and an external USB drive.

When I run Ghost in Windows and try to backup or clone, I get an error:

A General Exception Error.


I bought the Iomega HD and Ghost just for this purpose.

Symantec is no help as they do not support Ghost 2003 and advise I buy Ghost 10, which does not run on Win98.

I'd really like to get Ghost to work on my machine. Any help is appreciated.

[Paul Komski]

General Exception errors are likely the result of a damaged system rather than of Ghost 2003 as such.

In any case I would always suggest using DOS and not Windows to both create and restore image files. Radified makes the same point at http://ghost.radified.com/norton_ghost_2003.htm

So I suggest running it from DOS or use another utility such as BiNG or ImageForDOS.

[Cuc Tu]

Well, I've seen BiNG mentioned twice so far.

I can't get the system to boot with USB or network support, so I'm about done with Ghost anyway.

[juniper]

Did you create a Ghost boot disk adding the network and USB drivers and just running ghost from the floppy?

[deddard]

Ghost can have problems accessing external drives or other media.
I have found that it won't work at all in most cases using USB1.1, and it can't work using PCMCIA.
If any of these are your current settings, then there isn't a great deal that you can do about it.
The only thing I can think of (haven't tried all the steps yet) is to ghost to an image on the same hdd, copy the file to another pc which is running xp or something similar, and then burn a copy to cd, adding a boot disk along the way.

Another way (more involved) would be to remove the hdd temporarily from the laptop, get a 2.5" external housing and make an image using another pc. - This is the route I'm going to try next for my old PII laptop running win2000 (USB1.1, so no go on the external drives!)

[Sylvander]

"Computeractive" magazine is offering a link HERE (http://www.computeractive.co.uk/acronistrueimage7/index) to a FULL FREE COPY of "Acronis True Image 7".

I downloaded it, installed it, used the program to make a bootable CD-RW disk, booted from the CD, loaded the program and made an image backup to my external USB 2.0 connected HDD.
Fancy GUI, lots of features, slower than "Image for DOS" [50 min versus 36 to image C:].
Explains itself much better than IforD [more sophisticated GUI], but IforD is simpler and quicker in use.

[david eaton]

Thanks for that link Sylvander! downloadin it now.

[jlreich]

I'm downloading as well. I will give it a run when I get the chance.

[mjc]

I got it earlier...

[Cuc Tu]

PCMCIA network and USB1.1 or even 1.0 if there was such a thing. I just know I cannot boot from a boot disk with USB driver support. It hangs after trying the Iomega device driver for 1.1 then 1.0...

I think my only option is going to be to partition the drive so that I can burn an image to the same drive, then network it over to my other machine for burning to disk.

[mjc]

Looks like you have one of the 'problem' USB setups...not all USB chipsets can be bootable or even run DOS USB drivers.

You can better your chances by making sure you have the DOS drivers for your device...

At this point, I'd be very tempted to pull the drive from the laptop and with hook it to a laptop drive adapter or an external enclosure and then use Ghost to image it from my desktop. Then create the bootable CD...

[Paul Komski]

FULL FREE COPY of "Acronis True Image 7"
Thought I should not miss out on trying out the software but I have to report that on Box #1 (Asrock 939 Dual Sata-2) it could not visualise the solitary SATA drive inside and on Box #2 (Asus A8NE) which has two RAID-1 arrays on it the four individual HDDs and not the two Arrays were seen.

The arrays on #2 and the SATA on #1 are visualised quite normally by fdisk and by BiNG and by PartitionMagic and by DriveImage so it looks as if the Live Acronis CD is using a non-plug n play OS. This is particularly dangerous without the correct drivers since it can break arrays in a moment; a nuisance but not catestrophic with RAID-1 but that would certainly be the case with RAID-0.

Hence you can guess I am unimpressed. No way of knowing if the latest version would work but I'm not paying to find out.