Re: Will not boot to dos for Ghost or Drive Image

From: Bob Harris (rharris270[SPAM)
Date: 01/30/05 

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 22:25:04 -0500

GHOST 2003 can be run in two modes, one you execute from within XP, and the
other you execute directly form a boot floppy. The mode running from within
XP is less reliable, since it has to set up a batch file that plays a
virtual partition. On a bad day that can leave the PC unbootable from the
hard drive. If you have worked yourself into that corner, I recall reading
that Symantec had a simple (DOS-based) batch program that could fix things.

But, run from a DOS floppy, GHOST should work, even if you have a bad hard
drive, or no hard drive. If things are bad enough, GHOST will not be able
to "see" the hard drive or deal with it, but GHOST itself will still run.
Of course, this assumes that you have the fisrt boot device to be the
floppy. Some PCs come form the factory with the CD as the first device, and
so they will ignore a GHOST floppy. You can make the floppy the first boot
device by going into the BIOS setup, BOOT tab, and changeing the order of
boot devices. I recommned floppy, then CD, then hard drive.

It is possible that the GHOST floppy is bad. You might try a random win98
or ME boot floppy and see whether that can boot the PC. Such floppies are
available from www.bootdisk.com. If the hard drive is formatted as FAT32, a
DOS floppy should be able to see it. To change form A:\ to C:\, just type
C: at the DOS prompt. But, if the har drive is NTFS, DOS will not see it,
unless you run special drivers. The read/copy drivers are free from
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfsdos.shtml

By the way, the XP CDROM (retail version) is a bootable CD and can be used
to run the XP recovery console. This has some ability to fix things, such
as master boot records and file systems. Consider running CHKDSK C: /R from
the recovery console, it may help things. For other recovery console items,
type HELP within the recovery console. For info hoe to start the recovery
console, see the following links:

http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm

http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm (near bottom)

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_rec.htm

"Don Hamilton" <CDHamilnospam@excite.com> wrote in message
news:10vnmcnat7vd551@corp.supernews.com...
> Since the latest security updates XP sp2 will now not boot to Dos for
> Ghost or Drive Image. Both get many errors from reboot and will not run. I
> even tried the Ms Dos version from Ghost 2003 and it will not open. Any
> ideas?? Thanks Don
>

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Will not boot to dos for Ghost or Drive Image
    ... > the other you execute directly form a boot floppy. ... > But, run from a DOS floppy, GHOST should work, even if you have a bad hard ... is a fat 32 but the drives I was backing up are ntfs. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Backup Utility Recommendations Please
    ... Disc 2 has the same ghost folder which contains the 1 Mb ghost.exe ... larger image than a 1.44 Mb floppy. ... If the boot floppy could access the CD, ... If you use a W98SE or later boot floppy, it can access FAT32 drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Unable to startup/boot
    ... file system is not suiteable for running ms dos and sindows applications. ... > If you have a floppy disk drive you could download the Windows XP boot disks ... Run the application and it will create 6 floppy ... Can I boot up from a DOS promt al all? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: DOS and Harddrive Capacity
    ... But having it installed so that it will boot from the hard drive, ... does not mean that you are "using" XP when you boot from a floppy created ... limited version of Windows 98. ... No, this is not DOS 6.22, but perhaps ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.cmdprompt.admin)
  • Re: Using Real DOS mode in Windows XP !
    ... To do DOS, real DOS, boot from a floppy disk. ... Read the GHOST manual; it is pretty good. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain)
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