Ghost Made My Machine Unbootable!

[MrFabricotti]

I have four machines running Win2k. Recently I got Ghost to make images of all of the C drives. Worked fine on 3, but the fourth became unbootable after Gohast restarted the machine to make an image. When I installed Ghost on this machine, I failed to do the live update, and this may have had something to do with my problem, as I found a note saying the build I have of ghost has a problem with dynamic disks in 2000. Anyway, when I boot the machine in question, it goes through post and then tells me Not Bootable CD ROM. First checked the boot order in the BIOS, floppy, C drive and then floppy, so ok there. I eventually figured out how to make a bootable floppy with the Setupdlr.bin, boot.ini and ntdetect.com files, and putting this in the floppy drive will allow the system to boot into Windows, and everything runs fine. However, I cannot figure out what is missing on my C: drive to make it bootable. I have run Fixboot and FixMBR (in that order) under the recovery console, and that did squat. On a side note, once I boot into Windows, Ghost won't quite function as it is supposed to. I made the (possible) mistake of deleting the virtual partition made by Ghost, and now if I ask it to make a backup it tells me that it can't find the virtual partition. It won't let me make a new virtual partition through the Ghost consol, either. So, things aren't going well... I don't really have a good understanding of how the boot record/partition etc. works together, so I am finding it difficult to solve this problem. Can anyone point me in the right direction??? Thanks in advance!

Eric

 

[Dreamland]

Try running fixboot again, Eric. Don't know if it matters, but the logical order is to fix your MBR first, then the boot files. Not sure what Setupdlr is - the usual three boot files are ntldr, ntdetect and boot.ini which is what fixboot should be taking care of.

Is this the only partition on the disk? Is it built as a dynamic disk? Were the other machines set up as dynamic disks?

 

[MrFabricotti]

I ended up doing it that way, fix boot first, then MBR, and then fixboot a second time. The c drive is one of two partitions on the disk, and it is a dynamic disk now. Incidently, Ghost changed it from a basic system disk to a basic boot disk in the disk manager. I then changed it to a dynamic disk. The other three machines are not dynamic disks, although I thought they were before I just looked.

Thanks,

Eric

 

[Dreamland]

Eric -

I was hoping someone who was more knowledgeable in Dynamic Disks would jump in. I think the 'normal' three boot files (ntdetect, ntldr, boot.ini) have additional ones added for bootable dynamic disks - I'm not really sure.

Ghost *can* run from an NTFS partition, but I just never do it for the reason you've encountered. Ghost2003 can run from a bootable floppy or CD in DOS but still handle NTFS, so I usually just do it that way and avoid the NTFS option. When you run it from within NTFS, it builds that 'virtual partition' file that you've deleted. Don't worry - it was probably screwed up anyway because of the dynamic disk issue.

The problem, obviously, is that Ghost's boot loader is still hanging around somewhere causing trouble. It probably backed up or renamed the NTFS boot files you need before it did this though. Did you try looking in the root directory (recovery console or whatever) and see if anything looks like it was renamed by Ghost at that time? You might just be able to rename them back over the old version.

Check boot.ini first too - Ghost might have just done something simple like edited that. I hope Ghost made a backup first.

As far as fixing Ghost in 2K, I think you're going to have to uninstall it and then reinstall it to get it working again.

How are you getting this machine started now? Is there a working copy of 2K on D?

 

[rtlinux]

Hi,

Eric, did you copy the boot files from your floppy or one of your working machines (ntdetect, ntldr, boot.ini) to the hard drive? That may fix your boot problem. Another option is the old fdisk /mbr option. Who says DOS is dead?

as far as dynamic disk booting is concerned it is my understanding that the ntdetect, ntldr and boot.ini should be all that is needed. If not look for arcldr.exe and arcsetup.exe on the root of your drive. If they are missing copy them from a working system.

good luck



Thank You,

Roger Truss
A+, Network+
Workstation Customer Support Analyst
rtruss@mercmarine.com
Mercury Marine

 

[MrFabricotti]

I think the problem had something to do with partitions, or the lack thereof. Partition Magic basically didn't recognize my system partition, and at that point I really just gave up. Re-Format, Re-Partition, Re-Install. The best part is, after all that, I run Ghost again. Guess what, the exact same problem. No boot, no partition recognition. Sooo, ghost does not like this machine. I have since reformated/reinstalled for the second time, and all is well. I am working with Drive Image now, but I can't get the boot floppy to boot the machine. I can't believe the amount of trouble I have gone through just to make a system backup... all so I would never have to reinstall Windows and applications on this machine again. Which I have now done 2 times in the last week.

Thanks all for your help!

Eric Cable

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