From: "bearded lizard" <beardedlizard@discussions.microsoft.com>

| Norton Ghost / Win XP Pro users,
|
| i've read several of the questions and replies for norton ghost related
| problems (or solutions maybe) but i've not found a situation described as i'm
| experiencing so i'm soliciting your input on this matter:
|
| i have a dell inspiron 2500 laptop with an internal 11GB Hitachi drive
| running Win XP Pro SP2 with all s/w (critical/security) updates as of
| 12/26/2005. I installed Norton Ghost 2003 on it and proceeded to execute the
| backup operation. I connected my Datastor 20 GB Ultra external drive via USB
| to the laptop prior to executing the backup operation. Norton recognized the
| USB drive and accepted it as the destination for the backup *.gho file. Upon
| reboot to what should have been the Ghost.exe application (under PC-DOS) the
| program failed and displayed this error message upon reboot: "missing
| operating system" on a black screen. only available option is ctrl-alt-del
| keyboard sequence and the result is the same. I booted off of my WinXP Pro
| installation cd and ran the recovery console program. The windows XP
| installation is installed and valid on the hard drive and i can view the
| files on the hard drive in the command line interface of the recovery
| console. I have data on the laptop drive that in want to save onto the
| datastor drive (which is enabled under the windows executive through the usb
| port) but unfortunately, the recovery console only operates in Windows system
| directories. I can't change directory to the Program files dir and the to the
| application directory where the data is. I've about resigned myself to try
| using the fixbr and fixmbr commands for repairing the boot record or the
| master boot record on the drive but am concerned that will make the rest of
| the data on the drive inaccessible.
| Has anyone had experience using the recovery console and being successful in
| restoring a missin goperating system? Thanks for your replies.
|
| BL

Please explain what you are doing.

Are you creating a Ghost image of the notebook hard disk to the External USB hard disk ?
If yes, are you using a Ghost Boot Disk ?

It would be best to state what you are trying to accomplish and the steps you are taking to
accomplish it.
Then, based upon those details, it can be determined if you are doing it correctly.

--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
http://www.ik-cs.com/got-a-virus.htm