This problem arises on a Toshiba Satellite A500 0042E laptop with Vista Home Premium SP 2 (32 bit), which, in addition to the latest release of Ghost (14.03), also has Norton 360 ver 3 installed. Norton Ghost keeps getting confused between 2 of my USB drives,
causing the “safely remove” function to malfunction and necessitating a reboot of the computer. If I try to use Ghost when this problem arises it will usually not load, but this problem occurs even when I do not try and use Ghost (when it is just at its basic background level of operation).
I use several external USB drives for Ghost backups, including 3 large powered USB powered drives (Western Digital 500GB and 1TB,
and a Maxtor 1TB) and a Western Digital 160GB (“WD 160GB”) that runs off the USB power. I also use several flash drives on this computer for other purposes as they are too small to hold a Ghost backup (an 8GB and a “Toshiba 4GB” TransMemory U2M USB). All these external drives have been assigned specific drive letters by me, and that assignment occurred before installation of Ghost or the creation of any backups.
For some reason Ghost gets confused when the Toshiba 4GB flash drive is inserted – Ghost believes I have inserted the WD 160GB drive which did have a backup on it. It often (not always) gives an error message: “Norton Ghost cannot successfully reconcile changes since the last session” . From that point Ghost will usually refuse to load (gets hung up when trying to read the drives or connect or communicate with the backup service, and times out) . Please note that this problem arises even when I have not manually started up Ghost for any reason during the session on the computer (when Ghost is just at its basic background level of operation). When re-booting in order to release the USB drives, I often also get a message that VPro has not shut down, and that stops shutdown unless I manually shut down VPro.
I tried deleting the backup on the WD 160GB drive and through tasks-tools-options-external drives have removed that drive from
the Ghost memory – but then as soon as I plug in the Toshiba 4GB drive the WD 160GB drive reappears on the Ghost list of backup locations.Finally, out of total frustration, I uninstalled Ghost (using Windows Program uninstall), I chose NOT to save any settings, and I manually deleted the leftovers in users/username/appdata/roaming and local folders. Some was left behind in C:/program files as also have Norton 360 installed and thought LiveUpdate needed to stay on. With Ghost uninstalled there was no problem with any of the USB drives.
As a side issue, Ghost 14 then refused to re-install and a competent and courteous Norton technician spent many hours using the Norton Removal Tool AND extensive editing of the registry to uninstall all remnants of both Ghost and 360. My original Ghost CD
would still not reinstall, so technician downloaded and installed later release of Ghost 14, which then installed (and 360 reinstalled off its original CD).
HOWEVER, on re-install the same problem remains. Upon re-establishing the various possible backup destinations, Ghost still confuses the Toshiba 4GB (which is not a designated backup destination) with my WD 160GB (which is
On the Norton forum I see at least one other person had a similar problem, but trying the solution from that instance (removing the backup destination from the Ghost memory) has failed in my case.
If this cannot be sorted out, could someone please instruct me how to turn off Ghost in the background so that I can use my Toshiba 4Gb and WD 160GB in the general course of computing when I do NOT expect to us Ghost in that session. Perhaps
turning off the automatic loading of a certain aspects of the Ghost program or service at start-up, but being able to turn it back on manually without re-booting?
Would greatly appreciate any advice or assistance you can afford me.