[Larrycleve]

I have norton ghost 12 that crashes when starting a backup. The crash is so severe it takes winxp with it. The only way to get out is by using the power button. The program starts and runs fine up to that point. I haven't seen others having this problem. It does it when using usb or firewire external drives or to another partition on the hard drive. So I don't think it's a hardware issue. All other programs are turned off and a virus scan shows nothing. Version 10 of ghost works fine with no problems. I've been on the phone with norton tech support for 2 hours with no results. Is there a diagnostic program that can record what happens prior and up to the crash and then give an analysis? Is there a way to analyze this crash in a virtual environment so xp keeps running? Is there software that can diagnose outside of windows? I tried other companies' backup software but their boot disks use linux that doesn't see my firewire drive. Thanks.

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You should be able to boot off the Ghost CD, change to one of the folders and find your Ghost executable in there. Run it from DOS, its more reliable. I believe there is an option for Ghost to be able to talk to a Firewire device in a DOS environment. But the problems with the Windows are usually caused by some some sort of conflict with something else on the computer.

[Neil Jones]

You should be able to boot off the Ghost CD, change to one of the folders and find your Ghost executable in there. Run it from DOS, its more reliable. I believe there is an option for Ghost to be able to talk to a Firewire device in a DOS environment. But the problems with the Windows are usually caused by some some sort of conflict with something else on the computer.

[Larrycleve]

Here's some screenshots of the error messages from event viewer.

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[Neil Jones]

According to Usenet this can be caused after you run LiveUpdate, but the problem apparently doesn't exist before you run Live Update.
Therefore uninstall the lot, restart, reinstall and don't do Live Update. See what happens.

[Larrycleve]

Does this mean never do live update? I have ghost 12 on another computer that runs fine. Ghost 10 runs fine on the problem computer.

[Neil Jones]

I never said don't do Live Update, I said your problems may be caused by new files being downloaded from Live Update.

[Larrycleve]

I tried reinstalling with the live update box unchecked. Still crashed. I'm going back to ghost 10 which worked. I'm amazed that of all the thousands of people using ghost 12 I'm the only one with this problem. I'm so lucky I should play the lottery.

[Larrycleve]

Just found a product that works fabulously, Farstone's Drive Clone 3 Pro. It does what ghost 12 does without a few of the bells and whistles. It costs only $25. I installed it on the problem computer and it made a backup first time straight through. This obviously shows the problem was with ghost 12 and not my computer. I wondered why I could be the only one with this problem. Now I think there had to be others who just returned the product and didn't post about it. Keep an eye out for a patch. Knowing Symantec though, they'll probably issue ghost 13 and charge for it.

[Neil Jones]

Unfortunately programs do this on occasion and depending on your hardware and software configuration some programs of certain types just will not work as they should. These are one-off issues which may be unique to your computer and your computer only. One cannot test all programs on all hardware configurations, there will always be issues. Unfortunately in your case Ghost 12 didn't like something about your computer but not everybody with the same setup as you will come online and post about it. There are many happy Ghost 12 users, but no program is perfect on all situations.