Other Norton Products

[cdau221]

Hello,

The subject pretty much says it all. I copied my primary drive to a brand new hard drive (I formatted it NTFS before I copied it) and now when I boot the new drive windows begins to load up and I can even put in my password at the login screen. However after that it goes to "Preparing Desktop" and seems to hang there. Eventually it will move past that to just a solid blue background with the mouse pointer.

If I do a ctrl alt delete while it says Preparing Desktop and bring up the task manager, I can launch explorer which will then load a "temporary desktop." This only has a few of my icons and I receive a windows bubble message stating that my profile could not be loaded. If I then look in My Computer I can see that the new drive is not listed as drive C:. In fact, there is no drive C: at all. For whatever reason when the drive was copied over, it did not set this new drive as C: and it remains the old drive letter I had prior.

I have seen a couple of people here with the "Preparing Desktop" issue, but no solutions. If it matters, I am going from an IDE drive to a new SATA drive on Vista 64 with Ghost 14. Any suggestions? I'm open to other imaging software if anyone has had this problem and solved it with another program.

Thanks.

Message Edited by cdau221 on 08-11-2008 02:50 PM

[artdent]

Hi

Been there done that and finally got a solution yesturday. Problem is that Vista still thinks your new disk has the same drive letter as when you copied the partition from the original Vista partition. The solution is to edit the registry, which is fairly easy.

1. Boot into your new Vista install in safe mode (F8 while booting gives you the option to do this) and wait for the preparing your desktop message to go. you should have a blank safe mode desktop.

2. Hit Ctrl Alt Delete and open task manager. then go to file, new task and run regedit.

3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\MountedDevices and you will see entries like this \DosDevices\C. These are your hard drives in your system all you need to do is cut and paste the values for the drive letter of your new drive (the letter it had when you put the ghost image on it) to the drive letter entry for your original vista install.

ie my vsta partition is c: and my new drive was I: when I copied the partition so I just copied the vales for the I drive and over wrote the ones for c:

4. Delete the whole key for the drive letter that the new image is on in my case I deleted the dosdevices\I:

So what you have basically done is told the vista install to stop thinking it is drive letter I: (or whatever it is for you) and start thinking it is C: like it should be,

5. Reboot and should work like a charm.

Hope this helps

[cdau221]

Thanks for the reply, I do appreciate it. That solution makes a lot of sense, but I've sinced scrapped Ghost and used another piece of software to make the copy (worked first shot out of the box, btw). Thanks much.

[rajuraju]

Hello, I have the same issue with some "minor" differences:

Using Win XP Pro

Original hard drive is 250GB SATA drive (only want to clone the C: partition which is 70GB)

"Destination" hard drive is an 80GB IDE

The cloning process works like a charm, but when I disconnect the original drive and boot with the cloned destination drive, it gets stuck at the xp logo boot screen. I have tried Ctrl Alt Del but it doesn't work, neither does restarting in Safe Mode.

When cloning, I marked the make bootable and copy MBR options, but still not working. 

Any help?

Thanks 

[sevenshoes]

I used Acronis True Image to copy C: to E:, then physically removed the old C: drive and plugged the newly imaged drive (previously E:) into that controller on the board, thinking that would make it C:, and came up with this same problem.  Artdent's solution worked perfectly for me.  Thanks!

[jklovell]

Hi All,

 I just joined so I could add my solution to artdents. Follow his advice for editing the registry but just delete all the drives leaving A and B, restart the computer and all will work as it should. If you check the registry again all the drives will be listed.

[sgrateful]

Artdent,

First i just want to say thanks for providing a very thorough & detailed solution that worked.

I've been a ghost user for many years; however, i was hoping i wouldn't encounter any issues with ghost14 with regards to cloning a disk.  After all, simple process that's been around for decades which should be perfected by now.

Although it wasn't that clear initially, i did manage to copy c:\ drive to d:\ drive.  I encountered same issue listed in title of this page

" Norton Ghost primary drive stuck at preparing desktop and blue screen ".  I searched google and found this page.

Your solution worked like charm.

I just got off phone with symantec and they had a suggestion which i'm going to try...

In future, make sure the " NEW " drive, " Targe " drive doesn't have partition and cloning should be fine...

I'm going to purhase a new drive today, remove all partitions on new drive and try cloning again and see if it works.  I'll report back on my results...

For those who may not know, too remove partition do following:

Click on start or round orb in lower left of computer screen

Right click my computer

Click on Manage

Click on Disk Managment

Select partition on new drive ( be careful you don't select data drive, etc... )

Right click on partition

Select delete volume

[sgrateful]

Well,

Can't tell you all how disappointed and frustrated I am with Synmantec & Ghost14.  I've been user of ghost software since it first came out many many years ago and the fact that ghost14 cannot clone a drive without issues is simply unacceptable.

Symantec should have made a way for person to boot off dvd and then clone drives.  That way there's no conflict with running processes, programs, etc...

I purchased three 1TB drives, all same manufacture and model

drive1

drive2

drive3

 I installed vista ultimate x64 sp1 using dvd on drive1.  I then installed all windows updates etc.  I installed ghost14 next.  I then proceeded to clone drive1 to drive2.  Cloning went fine; howver, when i swapped drive1 ( boot drive ) with drive2 ( cloned drive ) i got problem described on this page ( Ghost primary drive stuck at preparing... ).  I edited registry per ardent's previous message and everything was fine.

But since i plan on installing lots of software and multiple operating systems using vmware, i plan on cloning drives ( to ensure i have accurate copy ) on regular bases.   So i tried to clone drive2 to drive3.  Cloning completed without incident, but drive wouldn't boot.

I have cloned drives for more years than i care to mention using ghost for windows, " dd & dump " for unix / linux, and various other software applications.  I have never encountered a situation like this from a well established company and mature product like symantect / ghost.

Going forward:

I'm going to try creating a disk image and restore from the image.  if that works i may consider keeping ghost14; however, if not, i may ask symantec to give me refund seeing product doesnt truly work.

I'm also going to try creating disk image using backup in vista which i've used before ( to clone drives ) on other systems.  If that works i may not keep ghost...

It's only a matter of time before windows comes up with more simpler and efficient program before they put ghost to rest just like they did pc-anywhere with remote desktop.   And if symantec doesn't get virus scanning to work much better, microsoft will replace that with something too...

Sorry to rant, but it's extremely frustating purchasing a product that has worked flawlessly for so many years to encounter this.  QA failed miserably concerning cloning on ghost14

I will say this though.... the support personnel at symantec were great ( patient and eager to help ) but support is only as good as product.  Can't fix something that is broke...

Message Edited by sgrateful on 12-13-2008 03:04 PM

[sgrateful]

To get the previous entry / note that i posted to work...  I booted off windows vista ultimate x64 DVD, selected repair ( not install )

Saw following:

System Recovery Options

The following startup option will be repaired

Name: Windows Boot Manager

Indentifier: {long number here... }

The following startup option wil be repaired

Name: Microsoft Windows Vista

Indentifier: {different long number here than that above ... }

Windows Device: Partition=Not Found

Let windows do it's thing

Shutdown computer, Remove Windows Vista Ultimate x64 DVD

Rebooted and everything is fine now

[sgrateful]

The process isn't consistent.    I can get it to work, but it's with lot of effort.  Cannot produce same results repetively, over and over again using same process.  I'm going to clone my drive back and forth between three drives every two weeks or whenever major change in o/s, config, or data on disk and i need this process to work with minimal effort and no flaws / gotchas ( thats why i boot immediately after cloning to confirm it worked )

drive1

* use for one two weeks

* clone to drive2 when major changes or every 2 weeks

* remove drive1

* boot off and use drive2

drive2

* use for one two weeks

* clone to drive3 when major changes or every 2 weeks

* remove drive2

* boot off and use drive3

drive3

* use for one two weeks

* clone to drive1 when major changes or every 2 weeks

* remove drive3

* boot off and use drive1

repeate process...

I need this process to be no brainer, no hazzle, no fuss....

Ghost 2003 and earlier always worked without any issues.  I cannot imagine why symantec would not have preserved the option to clone from cd/dvd without having to boot into o/s... It's the simpliest and most efficient.

I suspect all parties concerned ( ghost, microsoft, etc... ) concerned about priacy and stealing and possibly money.  Force one to buy enterprise software.

Windows Complete PC Backup doesn't appear to be any better either...

Message Edited by sgrateful on 12-14-2008 03:23 PM