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I’ve had a problem occur on two different computers when I’ve been using Ghost 12.
When I am setting up a new computer, I make images at different points in the process as I uninstall unwanted software, and install new software.
I decided that I needed to go back to an earlier image I had made. I restored an image from a few days earlier, and upon the first boot, Windows said Chkdsk needed to run. It found a number of corrupt and lost files. I immediately restored the same image again as a test, and Windows Chkdsk found the same errors.
I then went and restored an image I had made a couple of hours before the problem image, no problems found with that image.
The only thing I hade done in between these images was to uninstall the Office 2007 trial and the Norton Internet Security trial, and I installed Office 2007 Home and Student.
Now that the earlier image was restored (from before I did the uninstalls), I went and uninstalled the Office trial again, made an image again, and restored that image as a test. I got the same Chkdsk errors.
I then restored the earlier image, the good one, to get back to my starting point again, and this time I uninstalled Office 2007 in a different manner. (There are 4 parts to Office 2007 Professional that are listed in Remove Programs, I uninstalled them in a different order). Then I made a new image and restored that image (again as a test). There was no problem with it.
I’m not sure if the problem was with Ghost 12, with the uninstall routine for Office, or with Windows. But before I run an image I always reboot the computer to be sure that Windows is done doing whatever it is working on. Since Windows did not run Chkdsk at that time, but did run it after the Ghost restore, I kind of suspect Ghost, but it is just a suspicion at this time.
I was ready to write it off as an unexplained problem, but yesterday I was setting up another laptop in a similar manner, and I checked an image by restoring it, and found the same issue - lost or damaged files. I’m in the process now of redoing my work to see which uninstall/install caused it this time.
So I guess the bottom line of all this is that I have lost faith that the images I make are going to be good, unless I restore them as a test to check them.
Has anyone else encountered anything like this?
Thanks
It is Ghost 12.0.0.20352
Thanks
Well, first of all I would strongly recommend using LiveUpdate and upgrading to the latest version of Ghost 12 which is version 12.0.4.26321. There was a corruption bug that was fixed in 12.0.2 that could occur when creating a backup but would not manifest itself until you tried to restore. If you ran into it, you would get symptoms like what you describe or worse. So, please upgrade via LiveUpdate, especially since it's free.
Also at this point I would consider all your images suspect and would suggest you might want to nuke them and start a new set of backups after you have updated to the latest version.
OK I've updated.
Johan_Jeffery wrote:Also at this point I would consider all your images suspect and would suggest you might want to nuke them and start a new set of backups after you have updated to the latest version.
If a previous image has restored already without any issues, would you still consider it suspect? If so, I've got two computers here that I will need to restore using the factory image, since I've already restored the Ghost images on them several times.
Thanks
Unfortunately, here is no way that I can guarantee it. The only 100% sure way would be to rebuild. However, if some of the previous images that you are referring to 1) restored without error, 2) have no problems when you run chkdsk, 3) your applications run as they should, and 4) your data is intact, then you most likely are OK. Also, I might add the OS itself was a factor. We found the corruption bug that was fixed in 12.0.2 was far harder to reproduce on XP systems, but not too difficult under Vista. So if the systems you are referring to are XP it is easier to be confident that things are probably OK. If it is Vista, then the choice is harder.
I can certainly sympathize with your dilemma. Going back to the factory image is certainly a pain at the very best. For what it is worth, if it were my machines and I could gain a reasonable confidence level that things were good, I would go forward with what was good. If I could not gain that confidence, I would rebuild. But ultimately this has to be your decision as only you know the value of your data and what risks you are comfortable with.
But regardless of which way I went, I would start a new set of recovery points.
OK thanks. These are Vista systems. I'll run chkdsk on them.
I did notice with these systems that whenever I restored an image, on the first boot after restoring a Ghost image, Windows would always give the message that the last time Windows was shut down it was not shutdown correctly. Then asked if I wanted to boot to Safe Mode or Start Windows Normally. (I always do a normal reboot before making my images, so I know that was not the case prior to creation of the image).
Is this a normal behavior with Vista and Ghost, or is this a symptom of the bug in the older Ghost version? or neither?
Thanks
In this case it is Windows. This symptom is that Windows, for what ever reason has decided that something is ‘dirty’. We know that various things can cause Windows to think this, e.g. a machine crashes or maybe loses power. There are other things that can cause this, since I know that one can still run into this even if the ‘known’ causes don’t occur. And, of course, Microsoft has not shared what can trigger this to happen at boot time. If they would, I’m sure our developers would fix things up so that it would not happen illegitimately after a restore as it makes us look bad. I do know, however, that if Windows is in such a state when we back it up, that state can show up on the restore the first time. Our experience is shown that a majority of time you can choose Normal and continue on.
Johan_Jeffery wrote:
. I do know, however, that if Windows is in such a state when we back it up, that state can show up on the restore the first time.
When I started experiencing this with Vista, I made sure to always reboot before making my images, but it continued to happen.
So are you saying if I still see it with the update I now have to Ghost 12, that it does not indicate a problem?
Thanks
On one of the computers that is giving me the problem, I restored to factory image. Then I installed ghost 12, updated to new version, made an image, restored the image. On first boot, Windows ran chkdsk, found errors again.
Both of the computers giving me errors are Acer laptops.
Any ideas?
Thanks
What kind of errors is chkdsk seeing? Also, have you had chkdsk do a surface scan (/R option) on that drive?
The image you are restoring, are you restoring it back to the machine that created the image or to another machine?
It said it was "correcting error in index $I30 for file 11766" then it said it was "Recovering lost files".
I've restored it again to the factory image, and I ran chkdsk by right clicking on the C: drive>Properties>Tools. (Is that the same as chkdsk /r????) Told it to do the surface scan too. Found nothing wrong.
I decided to try Ghost version 14 this time. I'll report back with the outcome.
I had one of our developers look at this thread. Here are his comments about this case:
Tough one.
Best guess…without debug logs is we are only getting a crash consistent snapshot. (IE. VSS is failing for some reason and we are only using our SymSnap snapshot driver to get a point in time of the volume.) What I would really like the customer to do is the following:
1. Restore the factory image.
2. Install Ghost 12 and do auto-update.
3. Run chkdsk where it will do it on the next reboot and then reboot the computer
4. Ensure that chkdsk actually runs clean
5. Then take the first backup
6. Then restore that backup
If he still gets a chkdsk happening after the restore then I think it’s either something like the crash consistent backup I mentioned above or something worse.
I would suggest that between step 5 & 6 you would insert a step. Namely, that you would run the Seast utility (found in C:\Program Files\ Norton Ghost\Utility) and Gather Technical Support Information. This will grab logs files and system information and zip it all up. The zip file would need to be copied off so that it does not get zapped by the restore. That way if there are problems after everything is done, we at least have the log files for development to look at which could tell them more of what actually is happening that is leading to the problems you are running into.
OK it took me a while to get back and finish up that computer. As I said, after the factory restore I switched to using Ghost 14. The issue I described in this thread has not been happening now. (Although I have had the large incremental image issue described in another thread). So I cannot run the tests you've described. But thanks for the help.
Which version of Ghost are you using? I need the whole string from the about box 12.x.x.x.
Thanks!