[Claire M Jordan]

I recently suffered a pc breakdown which corrupted my installation of XP. Even though I own a copy of Norton Save & Restore 2.0 and run backups of my OS twice a week, I was unable to get my system to boot from the Norton Save & Restore Recovery Disk - a necessary preliminary to restoring the OS from a backup file - and so ended uo having to do a clean reinstall.

So, the first problem is, why will my PC not boot from the Norton Save & Restore Recovery Disk. It *used* to, when I first bought the programme 4½ years ago. It's not because my OS was corrupted, because it still won't work afterthe clean reinstall. I have tried it in both a new dvd-burner drive and a very old plain cd-player drive and it doesn't work with either of them. It gets as far as the bit where it says "Microsoft Corporation" and there's little green bars trickling across from left to right, and then it either sticks there or goes on to a blank screen.

I have tried it with a new burn of the Save & Restore Recovery Disk, and with a more modern Norton Ghost 15 Recovery Disk, which does exactly the same thing, and with a bang-up-to-the-minute trial disk for the new Symantec System Recovery - that one generates an error message suggesting that it's not compatible with my cpu.

So the fist question is, why does my system no longer boot from a Norton Save & Restore Recovery Disk when it used to do so, and I haven't changed my OS? I *have* changed my mainboard, btw - but to one of the same model as I had before. Is it possible that there's some BIOS switch which prevents it from booting successfully from these discs? It *will* boot from other bootable CDs, so it's not that it has a problem with CDs per se. It seems unlikely to be to do with these CDs being home-burned since the problem exists with two different optical drives.

If it isn't possible to get the Norton/Symantec products to work, does anybody know of another good backup programme which I can use to make small compressed images of my C: drive in a reasionably fast and trouble-free way?

One of the things which I lost when I ahd to do a clean reinstall was my isntallation of the Virtual Magnifying Glass progrmmae - a massively useful little app which I'd been using several times a day for years. I find that I cannot reinstall it, which is maddening. Iclick on the installation file, it brings up the dialogue which says the publisher cannot be verified and am I sure I want to proceed, I click Run - and nothing happens. Yet, I am able to run other .exe installation files, including ones with unverified publishers, without difficulty.

I have tried turning off my virus checker (AVG) but it didn't help. I think from the way it's described on sourceforge that it's possible in contains some kind of proprietary installation wizard, so I wondered if this was clashing in some way with XP's own installer. What can I do to get back this very useful app?

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Hi Clair

I have some questions for you:

- Can you provide the error generated by Symantec System Recovery?

- Is the fresh install of Windows XP working properly?

- Is your Hard Drive Sata or IDE?

[SleepyDude]

Hi Clair

I have some questions for you:

- Can you provide the error generated by Symantec System Recovery?

- Is the fresh install of Windows XP working properly?

- Is your Hard Drive Sata or IDE?

[Claire M Jordan]

The hard drive is IDE. The reinstall seems to be fine, except that I did have an odd problem where the .evt files for the Event Viewer became corrupt and I had to forkle about with them to get Even Viewer working again. Other than that, and not running the magnifier installation, it seems perfectly OK. The original damage was probably sparked off by a failing cpu fan.

Since Norton ran OK in the early days, I suspect either something different in the BIOS of this new mainboard, or some problem caused by a recent Windows upgrade.

The error generated by the Symantec disc goes:

Your PC needs to restart
error codes

0x0000005D

Parameters
0x03060A00
0x68747541
0x69746E65
0x444D4163

0x0000005D seems to be something to do with the capabilities of one's cpu.

[Claire M Jordan]

PS the optical drives are also IDE.

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

How did you create the Symantec System Recovery disk?

It seem you have a disk for a 64 bits system and you need the 32 bits version.

Can you post the brand and model of the motherboard?

[Claire M Jordan]

Ah - I just used a temporary link which Symantec support gave me in order to burn an ISO. I couldn't get the trial disc from their website in the normal way because their logon system was broken and going around in a loop (it asks you to log on to your existing account with them, then asks you to fill in some extra details, then acts as though yoiu were setting up a new account and tells you you can't set up this account because there's already an account with that email address). They didn't ask me whether I was 32 or 64 bit so I assumed it didn't matter.

Blast. Im not sure if I've got another blank cd anywhere to burn a new version, and I won't be able to buy any more until I go into town again next week: I don't think anywhere in our village sells them.

The mainboard is an Abit An-7. That means it's a Socket A, so it's semi-obsolete, but it was the most advanced Socket A ever made.

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

Do you know the BIOS version you have?

[Claire M Jordan]

I'll have to double-check in case it's changed but as far as I know it's the same as on the previous board - Phoenix Technologies, Ltd Version 6.00 PG 06/13/2005.

I just went back and checked the iso files I got from Symantec, and there's one version labelled 64-bit and one which isn't (and which I assume is therefore 32-bit), and there's no doubt that it was the apparently-32-bit one which I used to generate the Recovery Disk. I didn't even extract the 64-bit one from its zip file.

If the version I used is *also* 64-bit there's something funny going on. It's certainly not the same as the ISO which Symantec label as 64-bit, because the file-size is different.

[Claire M Jordan]

I'll have to double-check in case it's changed but as far as I know it's the same as on the previous board - Phoenix Technologies, Ltd Version 6.00 PG 06/13/2005.

I just went back and checked the iso files I got from Symantec, and there's one version labelled 64-bit and one which isn't (and which I assume is therefore 32-bit), and there's no doubt that it was the apparently-32-bit one which I used to generate the Recovery Disk. I didn't even extract the 64-bit one from its zip file.

If the version I used is *also* 64-bit there's something funny going on. It's certainly not the same as the ISO which Symantec label as 64-bit, because the file-size is different.

[Claire M Jordan]

I checked and the BIOS has an earlier date stamp - 2003 rather than 2005 - but it's the same version, Phoenix Technologies Ltd AwardBIOS version 6.00 PG.

[SleepyDude]

I'll have to double-check in case it's changed but as far as I know it's the same as on the previous board - Phoenix Technologies, Ltd Version 6.00 PG 06/13/2005.

I just went back and checked the iso files I got from Symantec, and there's one version labelled 64-bit and one which isn't (and which I assume is therefore 32-bit), and there's no doubt that it was the apparently-32-bit one which I used to generate the Recovery Disk. I didn't even extract the 64-bit one from its zip file.

If the version I used is *also* 64-bit there's something funny going on. It's certainly not the same as the ISO which Symantec label as 64-bit, because the file-size is different.

I'm not sure you got the correct information about the bios version number but from the date it seems you have the last one available for that board BIOS ID:19.

Without access to the Symantec ISO I can't say more...

In my experience with those Windows PE discs like the ones you tried usually when they fail to work it's usually an indication of hardware problems (memory, disk, etc.). Sometimes the PE disc needs specific drivers for the hard disk controller on the machine but it doesn't seems the case because it worked before.

On thing you can try, check the BIOS for the SATA configuration and disable the SATA ports keeping only the IDE controller enable, try to boot the original Norton Save & Restore disk that worked before.

[Claire M Jordan]

OK, I'll give that a try later and let you know what happens. I could send you a copy of the ISO to examine by uploading it to my web-host - but not right now as one of the bits of reinstallation which I haven't done yet is re-setting-up my ftp app.

[SleepyDude]

OK, I'll give that a try later and let you know what happens. I could send you a copy of the ISO to examine by uploading it to my web-host - but not right now as one of the bits of reinstallation which I haven't done yet is re-setting-up my ftp app.

Ok. Is the ISO big?

[Claire M Jordan]

I tried the SATA trick - it didn't help. The iso is about 380Mb.

[SleepyDude]

I tried the SATA trick - it didn't help. The iso is about 380Mb.

I has already expecting that because you don't have a Sata HDD but it doesn't hurt to check...

The Norton Ghost 15 Recovery Disk you use is this one NGH1501_AllWin_English_SrdOnly.iso?