Before I get into the meat of this, I just want to poitn out that I realize this may not be a completely Ghost caused problem, but I decided to post it in this forum because I'm relatively certain that someone will recognize the problem because they have had it with Ghost.

I have an 80GB and a 120GB hard drive. My primary was the 80 and the 120 had nothing. So I decided I wanted to use the 80 in a different computer, and make the 120 my primary. SO I acquired Norton Ghost v9.0 and used the "Disk Copy" utility to make a copy of the 80 onto the 120. I set it to expand, I set it to error check, I set it to copy the MBR, I set it to disable the SmartWrite (or whatever feature)...basically I set everythign so that it shoudl ahve been a perfect copy. Once it finished I shut down the computer, removed the 80, replaced it with the 120, and attempted to restart.

All was just gravy until I got to the XP screen right after the loading screen with the scrolling bar, and before when the Welcome screen would appear. At that ppoint it totally stops forever. The mouse cursor is visible and moves just fine (so probably not virtual memor problems) and everythign looks fine...it just won't get past this screen. I figure that Ghost didn't copy somethign correctly, or some settign is still the same when it shoudl ahev been changed, but I don't know what it would be.

Now here's the part that makes me think its Ghost that is causing this and not me just screwing up hardware. When I put the 80 on as a slave, or even a slave on an entirely different ide cable, it will boot up just liek normal, and from the 120 at that. The thing is, when I go to look at the HDDs in My Computer or even in the Computer Management Console, it still sees the 120 as the E drive and the 80 as C, despite the fact that it says the 120 is the primary and is functioning as the boot disk.

I'm compltely stumped, and I have tried much more configurations (I have a lot of time on my hands to wait for reformatiing and recopying many many times over and over) so please don't give up if you give me an idea and I tell you I've already tried it. I'm to the point hwere I'm close to just reinstalling xp on the 120, but I would like to avoid that if possible because it took me so long to get my current configuration to how I wanted it.

Thanks for the help.

I've hard of people disabling system restore before ghosting their system with Ghost v9 and having success. Dunno why that would work tho and sounds kind of strange to me.

Have you tried booting in safe mode?

Can't really help you with Ghost v9. I most use Acronis True Image. Before True Image I used Ghost v7.5 and earlier versions. I've used Ghost32 v8.0 with BartPE at work but it's hardly ideal for my uses. (Just use it for backwards compatibility with already created images.)

safe mode i have tried, diabling system restore i have not....I will work with this, thank you very much....will probably update later today on whether I have met with success.

Works like a dream, thanks so much for the idea of disabling System Restore.

Help...I must be missing something obvious but I have the same problem and can't find where to disable System Restore in ghost 9.0.

System Restore is an XP function which can be reached from the System Restore tab of System from the Control Panel. FYI: delete any old restore points by turning it off here and then you can turn it right back on (if you wish) in case of any virus attacks, etc.

That was for PaulyP.

Sorry Alec, I haven't had to use the function yet with Ghost and would just assume wait... here's to hoping! lol

g/l

Thanks Alec and Billy. Alas after finding and turning off system restore I repeated the entire process without success. I followed the manual to the letter. The only setting I didn't use was turning off the smart sector thingy.

I still get a successful copy but when I disconect the old C drive and change the jumper on the new one to primary I get the exact situation described in the first post. It boots as far as the blue XP screen and then hangs.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Cheers
Paul

Hmmm, either include the drivers for your new controller in Windows or switch your IDE controller to a generic/standard controller.

Paulyp4groups: just curious- was your version of XP an OEM version on a pre- built computer? i had a similar problem . i was trying to install a new harddrive in order to reformat original HDD for another computer. every time i installed, i got to the blue XP screen- asking for computer name- and then it hung. every time. for 5 installs. called eMachines, four different answers- final one worked. had to to do an XP repair with another (retail) version of XP . it seems that OEM versions of XP tack something on the OEM HDD that acts like a key and lock . if the lock is changed, HDD, then the key ,XP, wont turn. i could be totally wrong, but thats how i understood it. hope you were able to solve your problem- i know mine drove me nuts for a week!