Cannot create Custom Recovery Disk in Ghost 15

OK, one of the reasons I upgraded to Ghost 15 from 14 was the ability to create a custom recovery disk.  I uninstalled Ghost 14 completely, rebooted and installed Ghost 15.   Everything works fine in Ghost 15 except the ability to create a Custom Recovery Disk.  The Recovery Disk utility runs fine up to 100% of the green bar and shows "Writing Session".  However, it  never completes or writes the customer recovery disk to the CD/DVD, or even an internal drive if I try that option.  There are NO error messages during the session and I simply cancel out after an hour or so.   I have left the writing session on for over an hour to  see if it would complete and no go.   Strange, I have two other PCs that work fine with Ghost 15 in writing Recovery Disks and cohabitating with EZ CD Creator.  On the suspect PC, I also have NP buring images and disks using EZ CD Creator 10.2

 

Any insight would be appreciated.

 

System specs:

Vista Ulitmate 32bit with all updates

Core i7 920

Gigabyte EX58-UD5

12GB Ram

Radeon 5870

3 drives, two in raid and one 300GB velociraptor.

 

Try to create an iso disc image for the recovery disc. Then burn with IMG BURN or other.

Hi again Buzzkill,

 

I've also had problems creating a Custom CD in the past and it does take quite some time to complete. I think the last time I did this it took a bit over an hour!

 

I have found better luck if you do NOT let Ghost create the CD but rather choose to save the ISO image to hard drive. I know you said you tried this but also UNCHECK the option to create the CD. Even with this option unchecked, expect it to take quite some time to complete.

 

Now, very important. When Ghost finally does complete saving of the ISO image to hard drive, do NOT exit the Custom CD wizard yet! This is very important because once you exit the wizard, Ghost will remove the ISO image and you will have to start all over again.

 

So before you exit the wizard, copy the ISO image to another location on your hard drive. Once you have copied it to a second location, you can exit the wizard.

 

Now, you can use ImgBurn to burn the image to CD and I would recommend holding on to the ISO image so that if something ever happens to your new Custom CD, you don't have to go through this pain again.

 

I would seriously recommend letting the Custom wizard go for as much as 2 hours before concluding that it will never complete. I do not know why it can take so long but at one point in the past I had this problem and was ready to give up and cancel the wizard thinking it would never complete. But then I got side tracked on to something else which took me away from the computer for an hour or so. When I came back, lo and behold Ghost had finally finished. I forget the exact time it took, but I believe it was somewhat over 1 hour.

 

This happened with both Ghost 14 and Ghost 15. But this is the only problem I've had with Ghost 15 so even though this kinda "bites", it is a one time thing so I did not dwell on it. :smileywink:

 

Hope this helps and please let me know how it goes.

 

Allen

Allen M.

 

Thanks for the tips and I will try them tonight when I get home.   I have left it on for over an hour, but will try 2 or more hours and see what happens.  If successful, I will copy the iso and create image using CD Creator.

Buzzy

Does any think it is crazy that you should have to leave it for 2 hours to create this cd?

I agree. I left the PC on now for 2+ hours and it never finalizes or writes to the disk.  This includes writing the iso directly to the drive versus the CD-Rom.   I have two other less powerful PCs with Ghost 15 installed and the custom SRD takes about 15-20 minutes to create.   Waiting isn't the solution.  Note, I have Roxio installed on the other systems running Ghost 15 and no conflict appears.

 

Overall, I have used Norton products since Peter Norton owned the company.   I am extremely frustrated by the new Norton suite of tools.  I recognize the Comcast 360 is not directly supported, but it is effectively Norton's product and code.

 

1.  The Comcast 360 now loads LAST on one of my systems instead of first, even though I didn't do anything to the system differently other than create a backup one time using the 360 backup feature.  I didn't like or trust the backup feature so I bought Ghost 15!  BTW, I installed Comcast 360 right after a fresh install of Win 7.   After my first use of the backup feature in Comcast 360, my subsequent boot times went from 2-3 minutes  to 7-8 minutes AFTER I tried the backup feature.    No new system changes happened in the interim to impact the this delay in boot times.   BTW, several posts seem to focus on using the backup feature to an external drive as a potential culprit for the slow boot.

 

2. Ghost 15:  AS noted, works great on two PCs of mine including creating custom SRD in 15-20 minutes max, but fails to create a SRD on the third.   BTW, I completely uninstalled Ghost 14 first to ensure no residual conflicts.

 

To date most proposed solutions for  these issues is the time consuming and often limited effectiveness to uninstall ALLNorton products and then use the NRT, and then reinstall everything again from stratch.

 

There has to be a better way. 

 

Thanks.

Hi BuzzkIll,

 

Thanks for the update. Bww, I know the time is ridiculous and should not be necessary. I only know what worked on mine when I had a similar problem.

 

BuzzkIll, just to confirm, did you uncheck the option to create the CD? The recommendation is to not even try to create the CD and go with just the HD but I'm sure you likely did that.

 

When I had a similar problem, I believe I recall seeing a couple of times that the CD drive light lit up anyway (even though this option was not selected), leaving me to believe that it might still be trying to access the CD.

 

BuzzkIll, do you have any other utilities which might load at startup which uses your CD drive? Things like packet writing software, etc. Even things like Real Player could be a factor.

 

I would recommend the following. Have you used msconfig before? I would like to use this to disable all startup processes and programs except for Ghost itself to check on the possibility of other programs interfering. To do this, please type msconfig in the start menu search box. Then when the System Configuration window comes up, please click on the Services tab. Then click on Hide All Microsoft services as you do NOT want to disable any of those. Then click Disable All on the bottom right. Go back through the list and add the checkmark for Norton Ghost (so it still loads up).Then click the Startup tab and click Disable All again and once again add the checkmark back on Norton Ghost.

 

After this click OK and reboot. When the computer comes back up please see if you have any better luck creating the Custom CD.

 

Don't forget to Enable All on both tabs in msconfig after you've done the test and reboot again.

 

Please let us know how it goes.

 

Thanks much

Allen

Allen;

 

Thanks for your suggestions.  I did uncheck the option to create a CD.  No other utilities on startup.

 

However, I left the machine on overnight with it attempting to write the recovery disk to the hard drive and stuck at 100% as usual.    Woke up this morning and after awaking the PC from sleep mode, it began rewriting the files from 0% to the drive and successfully COMPLETED!?    I now have a custom SRD both on the drive and on CD.

 

Anyway, I will disable various services as suggested to see if that will improve the write delay.

 

Thanks again.  Now onto the other issue with Comcast/Norton 360 boot delay.

 

 

Hi BuzzkIll,

 

That is good news about this finally completing! :smileywink: Did you manage to save the ISO image in a different location on your HD so that you have it already there in the future if something goes wrong with your recovery CD? I'd hate to see you have to go through this again in the future. :smileywink:

 

This really should be looked into by Symantec because it is clearly not right that creating a custom CD should take so long. I will send a message to Symantec on this.

 

Thanks for the update.

Allen