The little message utility that is part of Norton Antivirus 2008 kept nagging me to accept the upgrade to 2009 as part of my subscription. I finally foolishly gave in, notwithstanding much bad past history with accepting Norton upgrades. A bad mistake that has cost me at least 4 hours of my time already plus all my customization of Ghost 14. I recognize that the time and the customization is lost, but would appreciate any tips as to whether I can get NAV 2009 and Ghost 14.0 to coexist or whether I have to go through ANOTHER complete uninstall of both and start back from scratch with my installation CDs and the requisite Live Update patching, etc. etc.
I am running XP Professional SP3. I had happily coexisting installs of Ghost 14.0 and NAV 2008. After dowloading NAV 2009, as part of its installation it uninstalled all existing Norton products. It may have asked my permission to do so, but if it did I don't recall that. After the installation, NAV 2009 worked just fine (although I haven't actually tried any scans or the like). But attempting to invoke Ghost created the error message:
"C:\Program Files\Norton Ghost\Console\VProConsole_.exe
The Parameter is incorrect."
that was reported in this thread.
Following the suggestions in that thread, I ran the Norton Removal tool. The tool refuses to run in a conventional Windows boot, thinking for awhile and then ultimately producing the following errors:
SymNRT.exe - Parameter is not correct.
and (after clicking OK)
7-ZIP can not open file.
As suggested in another thread, I booted into Safe Mode and then ran the removal tool. That was successful (it appeared, at least) in removing both Norton Products. As suggested in the thread linked above, I then installed Ghost from the original CD, ran LiveUpdate for the Ghost updates, and re-installed NAV 2009. Same result as above, with the "Parameter is not correct" error.
Thinking that it didn't seem logical that the same order as caused the problem would solve it, I used the uninstall utility from Safe Mode, installed NAV 2009, and then tried to install Ghost from the CD. When I attempt to access the install link from the splash screen that opens when you insert the CD, I again get a "Parameter is incorrect" error message. Same result if you browse the CD and try to run setup.exe.
I'll try to make this appropriate criticism as opposed to a rant, but it is startling to me that Norton would not have caught this kind of issue when NAV 2009 was in beta. Ghost 14 is not some ancient product that they do not support. Near as I can tell, it is the CURRENT version of Ghost, still for sale in the Symantec store. The idea that the NAV team would (a) not notice this problem and (b) be so uncoordinated with another product THAT SYMANTEC OWNS is appalling. OK, I guess that was a bit of a rant.
I would very much appreciate any tips on resolving this dilemma. If the answer is "don't use the current version of NAV with the current version of Ghost," I would appreciate it if Symantec would be honest enough to state that.