Other Norton Products

[alanb]

Hi all,

I spent an hour and a half tonight — and two and a half hours last night — on the phone with Norton Tech Support, speaking primarily with a gentleman who identified himself as a "Senior Technician for Ghost."

I called because I have a full drive image that I need to restore to my C: drive, but the computer won't boot from either (i) the factory Ghost CD or (ii) my Custom SRD... even though the BIOS is set to boot from the CD/DVD drive first, and even though the computer will boot from (for example) the Windows OS reinstallation CD without any problem.

Per the instructions of the "Senior Technician," I tried booting from a USB stick onto which I had copied all of the files from the SRD CD (the booting order was set to accommodate this in the BIOS). The computer ignored that, as well, booting straight into Windows.

During tonight's conversation, I tried booting with the Ghost factory CD in three different machines. It turns out that the Ghost 15 factory CD was ignored during the boot process by one desktop (Win7x64, 16GB RAM) and a laptop (Win7x64, 6GB), but I did actually see a "Press any key to boot from CD" message on a different desktop (WinXPx86, 3GB RAM).

So finally, halfway through tonight's conversation, I was advised for the first time that I cannot boot from the CD on my Win 7 machines because they each have too much RAM installed (funny how this concept never came up during the previous night's marathon session).

The "Senior Technician" informed me that the SRD operates in "Windows Pre-Installation Mode," and therefore won't work in a machine that has more than 4GB of RAM in it. He suggested that I remove 12GB of RAM from the computer long enough to run the restoration, and then reinstall the RAM afterwards.

Um..... WHAT...?!?!?!?!?

He acknowledged that, in 2012, a consumer pretty much can't buy a machine with less then 4GB RAM pre-installed. Could it possibly be true that everyone with >4GB RAM is powerless to restore their C: drive images without shutting down the machine, climbing under the desk, unplugging everything, opening the chassis, removing all but one memory module, booting up into the Recovery Environment with the SRD, restoring the image, powering back down, climbing back down under the desk, replacing the RAM modules, closing the chassis, plugging everything back in and then rebooting again?

Although we were on the phone for an hour and a half, he was unable to point me to a single reference of this massive, critical shortcoming, anywhere on the Norton website.

How many people are living in a state of false security, backing their machines up regularly without any idea that they won't actually be able to restore any of these images should the need arise?

Please, someone, tell me this guy was way off-base.............

Thanks,

  — Alan

ps — don't even get me started about the first guy I spoke with last night, who talked me into deleting the Active Partition from my machine and then gave up when Windows Disk Manager didn't allow any other partition to be set to Active... and who promised to give me an extra 60 days on my Ghost license as an apology for my having been disconnected/kept on hold for so long that night, only to transfer me to "an expert" before confirming that he had done so.........

[DaveH]

The amount of RAM has nothing to do with it.  It works fine with over 4GB.

Try making a new CD in case something is wrong with your factory disk.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/norton-support/jsp/help-solutions.jsp?docid=20091016094409EN&lg=engl...

Dave

[alanb]

Thanks for responding, DaveH. 

I hope that you're right about the RAM issue!!

As I pointed out, above, I already tried booting from a custom SRD (and from a USB stick), but the results were the same — the computer booted right through to the WIndows desktop, with no prompt to boot from the CD.

Plus, the factory disc was recognized during the boot sequence on the machine running WinXP(x86) with only 3GB of RAM.

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It was while creating the Custom Disk that I was reminded of another Ghost annoyance — namely, that I had to wade through Intel's somewhat labyrinthine downloads area for 32-bit SATA drivers that I never needed for my 64-bit system. 

According to this Microsoft page:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766093%28v=ws.10%29.aspx 

Windows PE provides "Native support for 32-bit (or 64-bit) Windows device drivers"

and

"[t]o install a 64-bit version of Windows you must use a 64-bit version of Windows PE."

It's 2012, and 64-bit systems have been in wide use for years — why doesn't Ghost come with a recovery disk built to run in "a 64-bit version of Windows PE"?

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The "Senior Technician" that I spoke with earlier today said that this is a known issue, although he couldn't point me to any specific online materials that confirmed or refuted his advice.

I found one comment by Newegg user "xTwisted" here, describing WinPE-related errors on a "large memory machine" (bottom comment on feedback page 1 of 8):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832108456

I've seen a few other sporadic references to the RAM issue, but just in the form of  posts by unknown people on unverifiable blogs. 

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Tonight's "Senior Technician"said that he would be calling me again , on Thursday, with his supervisor. 

In the meantime, if you or anyone else has any additional thoughts (or can confirm that you've been able to boot off of a Ghost CD on a computer with anything in the neighborhood of 16GB of RAM, I"d be all-31-flavors-of-grateful!!

  — Alan

[redk9258]

I'm sorry to hear about your problems. It is stated on page 28 of the Ghost 15 manual to test the SRD to make sure the recovery environment works for you. I do not have a PC with more than 4GB of RAM to test. Funny thing is I have never seen Windows 7 (64-bit) use more than around 2.5GB so I often wonder why I bought 4GB. I'm I doing something wrong?

How could he have given an extra 60 days Ghost license? Once you put the key in, it is activated for life?

[alanb]

Hey, redk9258:

This machine is being used as a digital audio workstation.  I’m loading massive sample instrument libraries (my favorite piano takes up over 1GB of RAM all by itself... never mind loading an entire orchestral template) as well as running multiple instances of processor-intensive plug-ins.  This requires as many cores and as much RAM as your wallet (and motherboard) can accommodate.  Unless you were running audio/video/graphics applications, you probably wouldn’t need this much RAM.  On the other hand... if you were editing hi-def video, you’d probably want even more...

As for the 60-day license extension, I misspoke slightly... he was going to add that to my Norton Internet Security license.  The Ghost license is, indeed, perpetual.  Of course, even a perpetual license isn't worth much if I can't restore my drive images......

[redk9258]

You do not need a 64-bit WinPE to install 64-bit Windows. I've read where people have made a custom install disc / UFD that has both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows in the same install.wim file.

The beta for SSR2013 (Ghost's enterprise cousin) has a 64-bit SRD available. I would expect the next version of Ghost to have the same available. It is based on WinPE4 and supports USB 3 natively.

Maybe you should sign up for the beta. http://community.norton.com/t5/Other-Norton-Products/UEFI-Support/m-p/738696#M48187

[alanb]

Incidentally, here's the entire Newegg review that I referenced earlier.  You can see that the user praises the software, so it doesn't come across as a pure hatchet job:

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Pros: Great software, you never have enough back ups, except.

Cons: When restoring the C: drive from a image useing WinPE from CD on a large memory machine, there is a gotcha. WinPE x32 when combined with Ghost 15 has a problem with large memory machines, >4GB, the image verification will report errors with the image.

Other Thoughts: If you move the C: drive to another Win7 x64 machine, where you can use the Win7 x64 OS to restore the drive as another drive letter, the back up image is fine and the restore is quick and easy. On a large memory machine >4GB (on some platforms >8GB), when booting from the custom recovery CD, the same back up image produces errors. By reducing the memory size to <=4GB the image verification errors go away, and the restore works as it should. Is the problem with implementation of WinPE x32 in the support of Ghost 15, or is this an inherent problem with Ghost 15 running on a large memory platform, I'm not being paid to debug someone's commercial software. C: drives don't need to be restored often, so leave yourself a note with the custom restore CD to check the memory size.

[DaveH]

If the systems are skipping past the "press any key to boot to CD" message then the disk is not even booting and that makes it irrelevant how much RAM your system has or even what your trying to boot.  Even if it was a 64bit PE disk your system wouldn't be able to boot it.

[redk9258]

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DaveH wrote:

If the systems are skipping past the "press any key to boot to CD" message then the disk is not even booting and that makes it irrelevant how much RAM your system has or even what your trying to boot.  Even if it was a 64bit PE disk your system wouldn't be able to boot it.

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On all of the PCs in my house, you can hit a key to choose the boot device during boot up. My Asus motherboard uses F8 and a couple of laptops use F9. Certainly the BIOS should honor the boot order. Maybe the boot order needs changed and saved?

[DaveH]

I have windows PE ISO's here on my system in both 32bit and 64bit.

I can extract the boot sectors of them and they are identical.

The file that makes you "Press any Key to Boot to CD" is called Bootfix.bin,  that file on both disks is also identical.

It's not until later in the boot after bootmgr starts loading windows that the system becomes 32bit or 64bit windows.

Thats why I'm saying that at that point the RAM is irrelevant, the CD hasn't even booted enough to even make a difference.

Dave