I've run LiveUpdate on several Vista 64 bit machines here and have not encountered any of the problems described here. Apparently not as common a problem as you are stating.
I'll investigate the problem you mentioned with respect to AnyDVD-HD. Do you have any specific symptoms that occured?
I believe an uninstall and reinstall of Norton Ghost 14 was part of the repair process (going by memory) that resulted in the Gear driver being installed on a system with AnyDVD-HD already present. After the Ghost install, the optical drive no longer functioned, or appeared in windows explorer (Vista 64). Removing the Gear driver (I don't backup to DVD or BD) fixed the problem.
If you search the net you'll find references to problems with this driver and AnyDVD.
Eric, having had the same experiences as Lifespeed I would like to back him up.
Vista Home Premium SP1 64 bit and many of the Symantics products are not ready for prime time. Ghost casued me more problems that a hacker could possibly have done. There are known problems in installing Ghost and running Live update then you can shake a stick at. It is a discrase that there is no message to indicate that the Install CD is required when running the first Live update; instead the liveupdate hangs or worse, destroys Ghost.
There are so many problems with Ghost and S &R to which Symantics does not exist. They may well go beyond Vista 64bit. As a user of six Symantics procucts I can tell you that Ghost, System Works, Norton Internet Security and several other products simply do not work correctly with Vista 64 bit. You comment just earlier expresses the attitude that Symantics has - "All of the problems are the users!"
Live update is a joke. I am unable to download and install several updates because they are corrupted (LU 1812); the fix that Symantics offers DOES NOT RUN UNDER VISTA 64 BIT! This is a joke. The products are so bad that the only think Symantics can come up with is to run their utility to uninstall all Symantic products and start over.
This is the last time that I will purchace any Symantics products - there are many other better and certainly more reliable products on the market to waste time trying to get Symantics products running.
The reason why there is no notice about requiring the CD is that it is not required. The original installation media can be prompted by the MSI when one of the installer/uninstall/upgradecode entries have been corrupted. When Ghost/NSR is patched, the items that are going to be removed need to have all of their pointers correct. When they aren't the Windows Installer automatically prompts for the installation media. What you're mentioning has nothing to do with the product, but entirely due to the design of the Windows Installer. The same occurs if a file or registry entry for a product is removed and the product supports the repair feature within Windows.
I don't understand why you're saying that the updates where corrupted. LU1812 means the patch failed to install. If the download was corrupt you would have received an LU1844 or one of 3-4 other LU error codes. If you have the log.liveupdate or an MSI log (using the voicewarmup steps I mentioned earlier) I could help identify why the patch failed. The LU1812 document has many steps to it. Could you clarify which step you said failed to run?
Again, LU1812 is a generic error. With more information we can come up with a solution.
Dick,
After all that was said, after a long history from several previous additions of Ghost, after this long thread, the update program still screws up. Erik declares that "Apparently not as common a problem as you are stating". Wow, Erik, has a lot of courage. Seems like he wants to pull away from the whole thing as fast as he can. You're correct Dick, there's at least one good alternative program to reflect upon.
I've seen this scenario before. In the past, a bunch of programmers screw up big time. Every time the crisis shows it's head from that deep screw-up, management screams to get it fixed, but doesn't put any resources into the solution. Man, I hope this isn't a scapegoat situation. One way out of it is to blame someone and let that poor sap go down for the rest of the team. I'm sure Symantec isn't one of those companies that has a security guard bring you a box a tells you have 10 minutes to clear out your desk. It's a scary scenario with expensive Silicon Valley mortgages these days.
I am not hear to deflect or claim the problem was due to the user or anything of the sort. If you post logs I would be more than happy to look at the logs to determine what the problem is.
When you create the installer logs via TEMP, a failure is noted in the MSI line via "return value 3" which denotes a failed action. The lines above the failed action will be due to one of the items above that.
Hi Eric
As originator of this thread I think I should respond. Sorry but I have not the time to spend going through all the reinstall hassle to get an install print out.
Live Update apart from Internet Security is unnecessary and a pain, why not have an individual application download update methods that work like other software has? Also a readme file to indicate if the update is necessary and what it does. That way Windows can uninstall an update if required.
Regards Mikeadmin
LiveUpdate patches for products such as Ghost are created with one of two purposes in mind. The first is to address any coding issues that are leading to problems customers experience. The other is for any security issues that need to be addressed. LiveUpdate is not designed to present a readme first and then decide which patches to download and install. Unless there is a security notification posted that notes you should update to a specific revision and you have a fully functioning product you don't need to update that product (referring specifically to Ghost here).
As to the comment about a readme and allowing Windows to uninstall an update I'm confused. In my experience the only "updates" that are listed in add/remove programs are Windows or Microsoft program updates.
As to individual update downloads, you can actually directly download the Ghost update. If you look at the log.liveupdate you will see a section that gives you a patch name. For example the US English .4 patch name is 1229636762jtun_norton_ghost_14.0_sp4_patch.zip. You can download by pointing your browser to http://liveupdate.symantecliveupdate.com/1229636762jtun_norton_ghost_14.0_sp4_patch.zip which will download the zip. The Ghost patch uses a full installer and can then be manually installed. LiveUpdate is merely a delivery mechanism for updates.
Thanks for sharing that with us Erik but this solution to the question and problem doesn’t appear to be up to normal Symantec standards. First, as the previous poster mentions, most companies allow their customers to navigate to a place to download the updates in a install package even if their product has a built in update mechanism like LiveUpdate. I would have never guessed that URL. Secondly, the ZIP file includes a batch file with no instructions oh when or if it should be executed. This is particularly worrisome as the batch file does a registry edit. Lastly, I’m disappointed that I spent an hour on the phone with Symantec support trying to execute LiveUpdate (unsuccessfully I might add) and the person I spoke with didn’t realize I could download the update even though I asked him that very question.
Yes, Symantec support and this solution do not seem to rise to customer expectations.
The critical issue being that anyone who has encountered this problem has already brought their computer to the failed state, requiring the removal tool to start over. The only use of this method is for trying to reinstall the software after failure.
There are several concerns:
This problem needs to be pursued to discover root cause. It is obvious that tech support is not aware of what is going on. A bulletin of the current re-installation procedure needs to be issued to tech support to help prevent current customers from suffering from this problem as much as possible until it is fixed. Most importantly, the bulletin needs to be updated as better methods are discovered to fix the issue. Ultimately, Live Update method/interaction needs to be repaired to correct the problem.
I suspect the experiment with the 64bit machines using Live Update may have been truncated.
1. Try several different machines of different brand names that have Vista 64bit installed.
2. Completely remove ALL Symantec products using the removal tool(s)
3. Install another Symantec product before Ghost is installed - Norton Internet Security is very common
4. Install Ghost and try Live Update to see if it fails.
Erik, perhaps it would help if you posted your test plan to see how it compares to our equipment, or help you find possible errors in your methodology.
Bannon,
I've had a document created to better explain the process:
http://www.symantec.com/norton/support/kb/web_view.jsp?wv_type=public_web&docurl=20090325172513EN
If you are experiencing this issue, it may be related to the MSXML files on your system, specifically if you are running Windows Vista.
I would recommend re-installing:
MSXML SP2 from
Install http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954430
If using Windows Vista, as some users had previously described, Microsoft released a hotfix for MSXML. LiveUpdate is dependent on MSXML.
Download the hotfix below:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941833/
Eric,
I have read this thread. Just today I installed a boxed retail version of Ghost 14 on Vista 64 Ultimate. A clean install that was running great....until I tried to install Ghost 14. I have used Ghost for years, almost switched to a competitor but stuck with it.
So it installed....But I too had a failed liveupdate until I put the Ghost CD in during the update process. Then liveupdate said they completed and installed. An image to another Hard drive worked after liveupdate.
However, like others on this thread, now my optical drives are gone! Device manager says the following for both of my optical drives: "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)"
I see fixes from Symantec to get liveupdate to work. I also see several different suggestions from some very helpful users on how to get drives back based on where you are at in this process.
My question is, based on where I am at......a clean install of Ghost 14, a liveupate that worked on the second try by leaving the CD in......what should I do to get my optical drives back?
I have no intention of ever backing up directly to optical drives. Do I just uninstall that gearworks driver? What is the best way to do that? Do the Microsoft registry tweak to get drives back but then I guess Ghost throws an error message? Is this an uninstall re-install thing.
Shouldn't there be a fix for this via liveupdate as others have asked??? So there is an issue getting it to run that may be a Microsoft-related issue per the above and below.....but when you get it to run and your optical drives are gone, what is that issue related to?
I also never got a prompt to do a "driver check" or whatever the manual was talking about....
Thanks to all for their help. I just want to get my optical drives back! :)
BJB
One more thing to note as I continue to research this.
FWIW I DO NOT have AnyDVD installed. So clearly that is not the only time this problem occurs.
There is very little installed on this machine.
I continue to research and hopefully will get some input here. At this point, it looks like going through the gearworks 64 bit driver uninstall which was linked from their website would at least get my drives back.
Kind of paranoid about running liveupdate again.
BJB
What model CD/DVD drive do you have? When you installed Vista did you install a specific driver for the drive or are you using the Vista default driver?
When you installed Ghost, did you install from CD or from a download?
Instead of removing the gear driver, it would better to try and resolve without removing the driver.
That Gearworks CD driver is junk. I have no idea why Symantec uses it, or who spawned it. If I were you I would just uninstall the cursed thing. Backups and restore from hard drive or RAID arrays work fine without it.
Or, you can wait for Symantec to fix it ;)
BJB,
I had the same problem with Vista 64-bit Ultimate/Ghost 14 and the Norton link below that Eric wrote on 7/11/08 solved my lost CD/DVD drive problem.
OUgrad
http://community.norton.com/norton/board/message?board.id=other&message.id=2666
My SATA optical drives are a Blu-Ray burner LG H20 and a Samsung SH-223. They both were running with the default Vista drivers and installed fine with my OS install.
I would be happy to try to resolve without uninstalling the gearworks driver if you have a suggestion that gets my drives back. Is the suggestion from OUgrad to remove gearworks from the "upper filters" registry entries the right way to go? I assume this is less radical than uninstalling the whole driver.
But again, somewhere in this thread I thought I read that someone tried this fix and then Ghost complained...
Thanks for your quick reply to my initial message.
BJB
BJB,
Create a Restore Point with System Restore before your try this if concerned about results. You then have the option to Undo the Registry change if problems arise. I always Create Restore points for this reason just in case.
OUgrad
I had this probalem on a Vista 64 laptop even though I followed all the recommendations. I eventually uninstalled Ghost and the Gear driver but that didn’t recover the drive. Editing the registry recovered the drive as far as Vista was concerned but then iTunes didn’t know anything about it. I eventually had to reload the OS and forget about Ghost for this system. That’s certainly not a good long term solution as far as Symantec is concerned.