Ghost 15, HD to SSD, keyboard problem

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1

Norton Forumers,

 

I recently used the "Copy my Harddrive" feature per a very detailed posting on the forum and the SSD drive boots correctly. However, once the drive is booted my keyboard will not work, and I cannot type in my password. The keyboard works everywhere except once Windows 7 is booted. When I boot using the Norton Ghost CD it shows the drive partition as E:\. This drive was copied from a C:\ with "No driveletter" selected to a partition which had no original drive letter. Furthermore the original harddrive has had its partitions whacked. The keyboard is a standard North American USB keyboard. Any suggestions on how to remedy the keyboard issue?

 

Thanks for your assistance.

2

Sorry, I see that you said it was Windows 7.  I missed that part.

 

How did you get it to boot as far as the logon screen?

Did you already do a startup repair on it?

Dave

3

Dave,

 

The system boots fine since the copy of the original drive, the only issue is that the keyboard doesn't work so I can't get into the system to change the drive letter to C:\ as I have seen on Microsoft website. I did not do a startup repair because I don't have my DVD drive connected, I will attempt a startup repair when I re-connect the DVD drive to the system. Do you really think it is a startup repair issue though since the system boots up ok?

 

The original drive's partitions have been deleted.

 

Thanks!

4

Norton Forumers,

 

I recently used the "Copy my Harddrive" feature per a very detailed posting on the forum and the SSD drive boots correctly. However, once the drive is booted my keyboard will not work, and I cannot type in my password. The keyboard works everywhere except once Windows 7 is booted. When I boot using the Norton Ghost CD it shows the drive partition as E:\. This drive was copied from a C:\ with "No driveletter" selected to a partition which had no original drive letter. Furthermore the original harddrive has had its partitions whacked. The keyboard is a standard North American USB keyboard. Any suggestions on how to remedy the keyboard issue?

 

Thanks for your assistance.

5

No, it's not a startup repair issue, but I know your boot files are present.  You must have correctly copied the system reserved partition in addition to the system partition.  Or your boot files are in your system partition to begin with.

 

However, you will need to do a startup repair as the second part of the fix.

First you will need to zero out the disk signature, that will force windows to reassign the drive letters and windows will become C again.

 

Then since the disk signature has been changed you will need to do a startup repair.

 

Either way, your going to need your optical drive attached.

Check this post by Brian, it shows the easiest way to zero out the disk signature using a tool called BootitBM

http://community.norton.com/t5/Other-Norton-Products/Norton-Ghost-15-Copy-Drive-Problems/m-p/441626#M33859

 

For the second part, fixing the boot, Brian shows 2 ways to do it.

The easier way may be with a windows 7 startup repair disk.

For windows 7 there are 2 different disks, one for 32bit and one for 64bit.

If you have another system using the same version of windows 7 you can make one using these instructions.

You can also use a Windows 7 installation disk if it's a retail disk and not one of those system recovery disks.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/5409/create-a-system-repair-disc-in-windows-7/

 

Or if you don't and would prefer that way to do the startup repair, let me know if your running 32bit or 64bit and I'll give you some help.

 

Dave

6

Dave,

 

So if I understand correctly, I will need to zero out the disk signature using BootitBM, and then use the Windows 7 install disc to do a startup repair?

 

I will give this a try later today.

 

Thanks!

7

Yes, you got it.

 

8

Thanks a lot Dave!! Worked like a charm!

9

I'm glad you got it taken care of, the whole problem could have been avoided if the Ghost User manual made it more clear that you cannot do a copy drive into an existing partition with a drive letter. it should always be done into unallocated space.

 

Since I can tell your an advanced user, I'll briefly explain what happened.

Vista and Win7 keep track of drive letters in the registry under the mounted devices key according to disk signatures.

On your old drive, pretend the signature was 111111.

The registry told windows:  Drive 111111 shall be the letter C

When the new drive got partitioned and assigned a drive letter in preperation to your drive copy, the registry added an entery:

Drive 222222 shall be letter E

 

Now since those entries were in the registry, when you did the copy drive it copied everything to the new drive including of course the system registry.

 

The new drive boots and as the registry loads up it only sees the 222222 signature because the other disk is no longer present so it gives the system partition the letter E

 

Windows then promply comes to a screeching halt and is unable to continue because all the files it's looking for are set for the C drive and there is no C drive present.

 

Glad you got it squared away and don't be so quick next time to wack the old drive. LOL

Dave

 

10

The SSD had been drive E: before, but I had removed the letter and re-initialized the drive. I thought that should have taken care of it, but obviously not! Thanks for the great explanation and all the help! I will definitely be more careful in the future LOL.