Other Norton Products

[alanb]

Now *that* I can try . . .  :-D

I'll post my findings........................

[alanb]

Tried it — didn't work.

Computer booted through, and went straight to the desktop.

[alanb]

In an act of utter desperation, I removed the C: drive from the computer, and placed it — along with the drive containing my backed up images — in an external enclosure attached to another computer.

My thought was that I would restore the image (actually three images: the C: drive and two Dell/Alienware recovery partitions) in the other computer's "regular" WIndows environment, thus avoiding all WinPE-related issues.

What happened?

I got this &^%$#@! error:

-Cannot copy data from the recovery point to the destination.

--Error ED800012: The internal structure of the recovery point file (CRC validation) is invalid, damaged or unsupported.

(UMI:V-0-3215-1010)

Taking into account (i) the number of hours I've wasted on the phone with Norton reps (or on hold waiting to speak with them), (ii) the number of hours I've lost trying to troubleshoot and undo damage that Norton reps did to my system (e.g., having me delete the active partition and then putting me on hold in order to transfer me to an 'expert' when he could couldn't figure out why Windows' Disk Manager wouldn't allow me to set any other partition as active), and (iii) the fact that I'm stuck with a disk full of recovery images that I can't make use of, I can only come to the conclusion that installing and using Ghost was a far worse proposition than using nothing at all.

And, needless to say, the promised call that I was to receive from the "Executive Escalation Team" yesterday still hasn't come.....

[Brian_K]

Alan,

Is this a correct summary?

Your Ghost CD doesn't boot in two computers.

Your Ghost CD does boot in one computer.

You get a "CRC validation" error when the image is on a USB attached HD in another computer.

A Win7 DVD will boot in your main computer.

For what it's worth, your attempt to restore an image to a USB HD probably would have resulted in a non booting OS. The HD needs to be mounted internally in the original computer. Unless you can get the CD to boot in the original computer you are out of luck.

One question, does the original Win7 OS still boot? You didn't say why you are restoring the image.

[alanb]

On a related note:  how does one determine whether "the internal structure" of any given recovery point is (1) "invalid," — whatever that means, (2) "damaged" or (3) "unsupported" — whatever that means?!?!?

[Brian_K]

Alan,

One other test which may help. Can you remove the HDs from your main computer and see if the Ghost CD boots?

[alanb]

Hey Brian_K:

Ghost factory CD and Custom SRD and USB SRD all fail to boot in two different Win7(x64) computers, each of which has >4GB RAM and one of which has a SATA III motherboard — Win7(x64) OS reinstallation DVD boots just fine in both.

Alienware recovery DVD also boots fine in both Win7(x64) machines. 

= no optical drive or BIOS issue.

Ghost factory CD and Custom SRD both successfully boot in WinXP(x86) computer with less than 4GB RAM;

= no issue with the condition of the discs themselves.

One Norton rep after another has insisted that this is by design, since the SRD (built, as it is, upon WinPE v2.1) will not work on a computer with a SATA III MOBO or  more than 4GB of RAM.  Even if I were able to successfully boot, I was told, there would be unspecified "errors" in the image recovery.

My Alienware's BIOS explicitly provides for booting from a USB floppy, USB HD or USB CD/DVD drive.

As for restoring the image to the internal drive, externally, I don't think that would be a problem, since (1) I can set the partition active during the restoration process and (2) Windows should be able to repair the boot manager if there was some problem when I tried booting off of the recovered-and-reinstalled C: drive. 

Of course, the above-described error obviates any discussion of whether such a restoration is in the abstract possible...  :-(

[alanb]

> One other test which may help. Can you remove the HDs from your

> main computer and see if the Ghost CD boots?

Good idea, and one that I had already tried.

The machine wouldn't boot, as it found no bootable device.

[Brian_K]

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alanb wrote:

As for restoring the image to the internal drive, externally, I don't think that would be a problem

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Alan,

It's a geometry issue. USB HDs have different geometry from internal HDs.

[Brian_K]

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alanb wrote:

> One other test which may help. Can you remove the HDs from your

> main computer and see if the Ghost CD boots?

Good idea, and one that I had already tried.

The machine wouldn't boot, as it found no bootable device.

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But did the CD boot? It should boot in the absence of HDs.