Norton GHOST 2003 Boot CD Disk for a Laptop

Norton GHOST 2003 Boot CD Disk for a Laptop

If you are like me, you want to put your image file on the hard drive somewhere. And from time to time, you make a CD or DVD of the file for extra safety. If your laptop doesn’t have a floppy drive, you need to find a way to make a GHOST CD boot disk, but since all of the instructions either tell you how to make a floppy boot disk, or a bootable Ghost Image on a CD.

A bit of background: I have an 80 G hard drive, and I used Partition Magic 8 to make my C partition 15 G, and then another three partitions with about 20 G each. I don’t remember who made my laptop, but it says "dy" on the top. Anyway, it’s the operating system that causes most of the trouble, and the smaller partition where my OS lives is easier to copy. Most of my programs, and the also the Ghost image file, are on D.

I had quite a bit of trouble finding out how to do this, so I’m putting this information on the Dell website out of gratitude for their service. There may be other ways, but this one worked for me. J It should get you around the "Missing Operating System" problem.

Here’s the plan:

Change the boot order (if required).

The computer looks for the first way it can boot into Windows or something else. This can be any drive or disk. But a laptop will probably be set to boot immediately from the hard drive. This means that even if you did have the right CD, the computer will immediately boot from the hard drive, and never see your CD. It was able to boot without looking any further, but you want the computer to look at the CD drive first. Later on, if you’ve left a Barry Manilow CD in there, don’t worry, the computer can’t boot that way even if it tries and will default to the next item in the list of possibilities.

Copy the "Standard Boot Disk with CD/DVD…" file from Symantec or Ghost to a new 3.5" floppy.

Use the Nero CD Burner to make a bootable Data disk by copying the floppy.

Which is pretty strange, since the floppy boots all by itself, but…whatever.

Test everything and then sell copies to your friends who only have laptops with no way to make 3.5" floppies.

To Change the Boot Sequence

Reboot the computer.

You need to know which key or combination of keys puts you into the "setup utility" mode and then to the "Boot Sequence" or "Boot Order" mode. Usually, you get some clues on the screen as the computer begins to boot. F10 works sometimes, but F2 is popular too. Sometimes "Escape" works, but it depends on your computer. My XPSR 400 wants me to tap on "escape" for a long, long time. When I see the screen that is counting the RAM come up, I can press "Delete" to get to the Setup Utility.

As it begins to reboot, press F?? rapidly and repeatedly. This puts you into either into the "Setup Utility" or directly into the boot order menu.

If you got into the Setup Utility, use the arrow keys and the return key to get around. There are navigation clues at the bottom of the screen, and also on the right side.

Click on the "Advanced" tab and look for the "Boot Sequence".

The drive that is referenced at the top of the list is the one that boots first.

When you’ve succeeded, save the changes and exit.

It’s a good idea to do this step again to make sure that everything has worked, and also to allow yourself to see the setup screen again for possible use later if you don’t know it too well. There’s a World of Wonder in there and it’s all yours.

Go to the Symantec Website or just use GHOST/Ghost Utilities/Norton Ghost Boot Wizard and copy the "Standard Boot Disk with CD/DVD reading/writing…" onto a NEW 3.5" Floppy.

Additional Services:

no change .

DOS Version:

Use PC DOS.

Ghost Executable Location:

No change.

Destination Drive:

No change (should be your floppy disk letter).

Review:

No change.

Then just follow the instructions. Not too much to think about here. Just "start" and let the computer do the work, starting with "format". When the formatting is complete, exit that particular screen, and the computer will start to write the file and finally, voilá.

Leave the floppy in the drive and go to NERO 6 Ultra Edition. Use Nero Express. Copy the floppy as a Bootable DATA disk onto the CD.

Nero / Nero Express / DATA / Bootable Data Disk / Add

and then go find your floppy. When the contents of the floppy comes up, right click and select "all", and then click the "add" button. Exit the selection screen and click next. The next screen asks you if you want to use the standard boot image. But you select "Read boot disk in drive". Put in a new CD and select "burn".

The CD should now work in your laptop. If it doesn’t, you should try at least once more, since for some reason, the quality or the raw CD or the floppy can make a difference. For me, when the PC DOS screen for Ghost showed up on my laptop screen, it told me that I couldn’t write to A:\. This makes sense since A:\ was on another machine entirely. I entered "F" since I didn’t care if there was a write protect error or not and it worked. My field mouse even worked. Amazing!

After you have made your image file, check the log to see what Ghost thinks it did. Then use the CD to get into Ghost and check the integrity of the image you made and then check the log with the computer to see if the image file integrity check was successful. Another good check is to use Ghost Explorer from the computer. If you can work with the files, you’ve done about all you can do.

"SHOULD work??!!!???"