Norton Ghost Strange Warning Message!

[Daffy D]

Hi

I have been using Norton Ghost 2003 backup for years and never had any problem with it.

Couple of days ago did what I considered would be a regular back-up, am a bit sloppy in this and only do it at irregular intervals when I think of it.

The back-up went as normal, the program did a back-up then an integrity check then as usual restarted the computer, but instead of getting the normal Windows start screen I got a black screen with white writing (DOS Style) with this warning message:-

Warning! This disk does not contain any active, non hidden, primary partitions.

The computer will not start correctly if the virtual partition is removed.

Please enter the number of the action you wish to take:

(1) Exit to DOS

(2) Remove Virtual Partition

(3) Activate the first, Non-Hidden, Primary Partition.

Tried No1 and got the message “Unable to return to Windows – ghreboot failed to return to Windows, type ghreboot and press “Enter”

Did that - which returned me to the warning message screen.

Why would I want to press No2 when the message warns that this would stop the computer from starting correctly?

So with the other options gone pressed No3 – This started windows and everything seemed back to normal.

I then checked the Back-Up destination folder and that looked OK with the Ghost files as per normal.

I then did an integrity check using the boot disk and that checked out OK.

So the question is what prompted this warning and do I have a useable Back-Up?

The things I can think of that are different from previous use of Ghost is that I recently installed a new Motherboard and CPU but have had no problems with any other programs.

The other thing I did was use the Windows Clean–Up compression feature on the HDD, but this is only for programs not used often so should not affect Windows start up – Should it?

I use XPSp2 with all the latest patches installed. The new Motherboard is an ASUS P5VD2-MX SE with Dual-Core Pentium Processor.

Any help, suggestions and advice welcome.

D.D.

P.S. – Compressing the HDD didn’t do much for extra space (got lots of space back by deleting or moving Torrent files) but now I have all these blue file name which I don’t really like. Is there anyway of uncompressing all the files? I can do them one at a time but that would take a loooooooooong time.

[Carmine6]

The plain language translations:

1) Try to pretend there is no problem

2) Ignore this warning and do something bad even though this shouldn't be an option

3) Do the thing that we should suggest doing and maybe should do automatically

I wonder why there's no option to choose among the non-hidden primary partitions if there were more than one. If the backup is in doubt, why not try to do it again? If you get the same problem then you'll know it wasn't a one time deal.

I've always avoided compression but that's mainly superstition on my part from the days when these programs would mess things up a lot. I still fell like having uncompressed files makes it less likely they'll get corrupted. And also more likely that they'll be useable if there is an error.

Oh, just a thought, perhaps there are bios settings that could be different than the old motherboard. No idea which ones would affect the drive. But for example some settings you can cache the bios into memory. Perhaps there's some option in the bios dealing with the drive.

[Daffy D]

The plain language translations:

1) Try to pretend there is no problem

2) Ignore this warning and do something bad even though this shouldn't be an option

3) Do the thing that we should suggest doing and maybe should do automatically

I wonder why there's no option to choose among the non-hidden primary partitions if there were more than one. If the backup is in doubt, why not try to do it again? If you get the same problem then you'll know it wasn't a one time deal.

I've always avoided compression but that's mainly superstition on my part from the days when these programs would mess things up a lot. I still fell like having uncompressed files makes it less likely they'll get corrupted. And also more likely that they'll be useable if there is an error.

Oh, just a thought, perhaps there are bios settings that could be different than the old motherboard. No idea which ones would affect the drive. But for example some settings you can cache the bios into memory. Perhaps there's some option in the bios dealing with the drive.

Hi

Yea! I did redo the back-up couple of times, the last time I first deleted the Ghost files in the destination folder just in case I was seeing old files but it did seem to do a back-up as a new set of Ghost files appeared.

Every time I still got the “Warning!” message. Apart from the “Warning!” it all seems OK but I wonder will it do a restore should the need arise. I would rather find out now than when it’s too late.

Any advice what to look for in the BIOS. This BIOS has more options than my last Board and till I get round to reading the manual have left it alone.

I don’t like compressed files either but this was a momentary desperate measure and I would really like to undo the compression.

D.D.

[Carmine6]

Sorry, no clue about which bios setting could affect the disk. Was hoping someone else would chime in.

Sounds weird that you keep getting it every time you backup. Maybe try their website?