try booting up and using f8, highlight "Last Known Good Configuration" and that should roll you back to before you installed SP2. ...1 otherthing dont ever be the first to install a new SP from MS. Wait to hear if it screwed up other computers first. If you havent heard any horror stories after a week and a half after its release its probably ok to install.

try booting up and using f8, highlight "Last Known Good Configuration" and that should roll you back to before you installed SP2. ...1 otherthing dont ever be the first to install a new SP from MS. Wait to hear if it screwed up other computers first. If you havent heard any horror stories after a week and a half after its release its probably ok to install.

try booting up and using f8, highlight "Last Known Good Configuration" and that should roll you back to before you installed SP2. ...1 otherthing dont ever be the first to install a new SP from MS. Wait to hear if it screwed up other computers first. If you havent heard any horror stories after a week and a half after its release its probably ok to install.

You have my sympathy, Eric. I know what it's like to lose important data in that way. (Not that I've ever had any problems with Ghost 2003 - touch wood - but I once did with Drive Image).
 
Regardless of what happens now, might I suggest that in future not only ought you to do full backups of your root drive but also copy to a CD or DVD all your personal files (like My Docs).
 
What I do is partition my hard drive several ways, one partition being reserved for just documents and drivers and utilities, copied across from the root drive (drag n' drop). I also periodically copy these to a separate DVD. This way, if Ghost ever goes belly-up and I can't restore, all will not be lost. As soon as I could re-format the root drive and reinstall Windows, all those personal files from the other partition could then be rapidly copied back. Even if that partition got wiped, I'd still have the DVD copies.
 
Backup, in my experience, needs to be multi-faceted.

Ok. Two things.
 
First off, SP2 cannot be rolled back using last known, or uninstall, OR by rolling back to a previous check point. I know, I tried.
 
I am working on a fresh install of XP. Formatted and re-installed.
 
What I'm hoping to find, is a link to some resource, or program, that will allow me to extract items from ghost images, even if I do not have all of them available.
 
Thanks again.
 
 
Eric the Grey

Ghost Explorer can open/extract file(s) from your images, it is installed when you install Norton Ghost 2003.

From my first post: "I've tried using the Ghost Explorer, but with no success. I can only open the very first image, and nothing more."
 
Ghost Explorer will not open up all the archives, only the first one or two. I need something that will read all the good ones, regardless of the missing ones.
 
I've used the -corrupt and -ignoreindex options, and it still will not open up all the files.
 
 
Eric the Grey

Gosh, sorry about that, that's what I get for not reading carefully. I'll have a look around and see what I can find.

s'Ok. It's not like I haven't done the same.
 
Thanks for looking though.
 
 
Eric the Grey

If you have any other computer available, try to copy all the 30 .gho discs on the available hard drive. Norton Ghost Explorer is very "moody" and "stubborn" if doesn't have all the discs visible simultaneously. So, if you have like only 2 discs and 2 CD-ROM drives is OK to load a disc in each. But with the 30 of them you need to copy all of them to a hdd and after that try to open the image with Ghost Explorer.
 
Good Luck.

It's me again. Did you try to recover the 5 problem CDs? You can use isobuster: http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster/ which worked great for me.

Are the images actually bad? Try coping the contents of the CD to your HD. If they copy from the CD to the HD succesfully then the image should be good.

Originally posted by AlexGMH:

Quote:It's me again. Did you try to recover the 5 problem CDs? You can use isobuster: http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster/ which worked great for me. 
Well, I tried this, and it did pull the images off, but with errors in tact. No luck running Ghost Explorer after that either.
 

Quote:Are the images actually bad? Try coping the contents of the CD to your HD. If they copy from the CD to the HD succesfully then the image should be good. 
If I try to copy from the CDR, I get: "Cannot copy CDR00005: Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)."
 
I don't suppose there is an answer to my delima. Thanks for the advice anyway people.
 
 
Eric the Grey

Assuming that you receive the CRC error from Windows Explorer when trying to copy the ghost image, it's likely a bad burn/bad CD.
 
Very unfortunate, and I can sympathasize...

Another lesson learnt, perhaps - that one should always get the backup software to check the integrity of the backup before it's assumed that the backup is completed and can be put away.

I never burn Ghost images directly. Frankly I don't trust Norton to burn them properly.
 
I prefer to save the images to another hard drive or partition (for clients I carry around a spare 80Gb drive just for this reason), and I use the following Ghost command line parameters to force Ghost to split all images into 699Mb files so that they can easily be burned later:
 
ghost.exe -split=699 -auto
 
When I do burn the image files later, I burn them using Nero and always use the verify option to insure the integrity of the data on the CDs (or DVDs).
 
 

There may yet be hope for your files, if not for the GHOST images. Installing SP-2 maeks big changes to Windows XP, but it should NOT have bothered your personal files. In fact, the hard drive is probably OK and easily readbale, assuming that it had no defects before installing SP-2.
 
So, instead of messing with the GHOST images, think about ways to read the internal hard drive directly and then recover your files. Potential options include:
 
1. XP recovery console run form the XP CDROM. Unfortunately, even if this reads the hard drive, it may refuse to copy files off of it, depending on certain registry settings made while XP was running. But, maybe you can get into safe mode and chnages those:
 
Instead, just run REGEDIT and change two things that appear on the same page:
 
Start --> Run --> Regedit
 
Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Setup\RecoveryConsole
 
Set the DWORD SecurityLevel value to 1
 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Setup\ RecoveryConsole
 
Set the DWORD SetCommand value to 1
 
2. A KNOPPIX ISO file burned to CD can be used to boot the PC into LINUX. Supposedly the latest version has limited abilitites to read/copy NTFS, and full abilities for FAT32.
 
3. Use an old-fashioned DOS boot disk. If needed, Add free read/copy NTFS drivers from www.sysinternals.com. Of course, you must have some place to copy the files to, and that place must be DOS-compatible. If necessary, temporarily add a second internal hard drive formatted as FAT32.
 
4. Remove the old hard drive, with XP SP-2 and files on it. Place it in a USB 2.0 enclosure, available online or in major PC store for under $100. Now, plug the enclosure into another PC that supports USB 2.0 (Any PC running XP will do.) Copy the files to the new PC.
 

I forgot to mention the obvious: You could do a "repair" installation of XP. This differs from a normal installation in that it does NOT format the drive, and does not destroy your data. However, a repair will undo all XP updates, taking you back to XP (original) or XP (SP-1), depending on what is on your XP CDROM. Note that it may not be possible to do a "repair", if you have an OEM CDROM. But, it might be worth investigating the options. Here are some links about repairing XP:
 
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341
 
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm
 
http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=23979,00.asp
 

Greetings,
 
I know your frustration with the Ghost images. I have had several go bad. And Symantec seems clueless as to how to fix the problems with corrupt images.
 
There is a program that you can use to 'see' your Windows XP NTFS system tho. It is called BartPE. Here is the URL:
 
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
 
This program will allow you to download and ISO image and create a boot CD. The boot cd IS Windows. So it will read and write NTFS file systems.
 
(I have tried Knoppix and it works to 'see' the drive but since it is Linux you will surely corrupt your hard drive by using it to write to the file system.)
 
I know this is several months after you had the problem so you have probably restored the hard drive by now. But this CD is invaluable for the future. It will not do anything about the corrupt Ghost images. But it wil allow you to see the Windows files when your computer won't boot unless the hard drive refuses to spin.
 
Also, there are some 'plugins' available for this that will allow you to run Ghost 8 from the CD but you should have a registered version of Ghost to install that.
 
Hope this helps someone.
 
David

It may not help, but try to read the gost discs on a different machine (cd-rom). It may (or may not) work.
 
Good luck