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Thinkpad Won't Boot After Using Norton Ghost

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thesurg3on
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Thinkpad Won't Boot After Using Norton Ghost

#1 Post by thesurg3on » Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:28 pm

This article is from Lenovo's support site. I had this issue and decided to post it for all to know.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-57590
http://www-csl.csres.utexas.edu/users/b ... grade.html

Article:

Symptom
The master boot record on affected systems is comprised of 4 sectors, as opposed to the single sector expected by Norton Ghost. Since the boot is dependent on coding contained in all 4 sectors, the system hangs when it attempts to boot to the incomplete master boot record. A "signature failure" error message may also be displayed.

Affected configurations
This symptom apples to any NetVista, ThinkCentre and ThinkPad system using the WinPE Rescue and Recovery partition; as opposed to the PARTIES partition used on NetVista, ThinkCentre and ThinkPad systems prior to 2004.

Solution
The Ghost documentation provides the solution. Use the -IB switch when invoking Ghost from the command line or within a batch file. This should be done on both the image creation. The command line syntax is, C:\> GHOST -IB

A complete list of Ghost command line switches is displayed by typing GHOST ? and pressing the Enter key at the command prompt. For further information, contact Symantec technical support.
Additional information
If you need to Ghost an entire hard drive, including a hidden partition, use the following method:

1. Enter BIOS, go to Security, and set the predesktop area to "disabled" to make the hidden partition visible on the system with the source drive.
2. Run Symantec Ghost with the -IB switch when you create the image (example: C:\> GHOST -IB)
3. After the image is created, make the predesktop area visible on the target system by disabling it.
4. Restore the image created in step 2. No special switches are needed for this step.
5. Reset the predesktop area to "normal", the system may be booted normally to the operating system or to the predesktop area by pressing the Access IBM key during POST.


Second Article:
Upgrading Hard Drive in an IBM Thinkpad X40
June 2005 & August 2006

My IBM Thinkpad X40 came with a 40GB hard drive, and I wanted to upgrade it to a larger 60GB drive, while preserving my existing files and operating-system installation. This procedure turns out to be much more complex than it ought to be, even for experienced 'power users'.

This web page contains accumulated wisdom on this topic, from myself and others. In particular, Anthony Barron put together this document, which has some information that was lacking in my original procedure.

Quick summary

1. To clone a Thinkpad hard drive, use Ghost 2003.
2. You must run Ghost from a separate boot disk, not from the hard drive. You can use a bootable CD or (possibly) a bootable USB drive. You will be running the version of Ghost that runs on top of DOS.
3. You must disable the IBM Predesktop area (hidden portion of hard drive), or cloning will not work. To do this, press F1 at boot, go to Security | IBM Predektop Area, and disable it.
4. Configure ghost to use either the "-ib" or "-ia" command line options for cloning. I had best luck with "-ib" but Anthony found that either one works if you do everything else right.

My original procedure

1. Backup:
1. If the data on your laptop is valuable, be *sure* to back it up to CD or DVD or a USB hard drive before attempting the following operation. It is very easy to inadvertently erase your entire hard drive if you make a mistake with the following procedure.
2. Hardware purchases and setup:
1. Buy the new 60 GB hard drive from IBM. Make sure to get the correct model for the X40.
2. Option #1: Use your Thinkpad to do the hard drive copy:
1. Buy an "ultrabase dock" for the IBM X40.
2. Buy the "ThinkPad 2nd HDD Adapter for Ultrabay Slim"
3. Put the new hard drive into the HDD adaptor, then put the adaptor into the ultrabase dock and dock the computer.
3. Option #2: Use a desktop machine to do the hard drive copy (This option was figured out by Richard Spors)
1. Buy two laptopIDE-to-desktopIDE adaptors
2. hook up the old and new hard drives to the desktop computer via the adaptors.
3. You may need to temporarily set the jumper on one drive for "CS" (aka Cable Select)
3. Copy old hard drive to new one:
1. Buy and install a copy of Norton Ghost. I used Ghost 2003 which is included with Norton SystemWorks premier, but you can also buy Ghost separately. If you buy Ghost with Norton SystemWorks, Ghost must be installed in a separate step -- the main install for SystemWorks does not install Ghost.
2. On IBM Laptops, by default the BIOS hides part of the hard drive so that even Norton Ghost cannot see it. The hidden part of the drive is called the "Predesktop Area", and contains the system recovery software. You must "unhide" this hidden area before successfully using Ghost to image the hard drive. To "unhide" the hidden area, invoke the BIOS on bootup by pressing "F1". Then, under "Security", change "Access IBM Predesktop Area" to "Disabled". Reboot.
3. Run Ghost. Choose "Ghost Advanced -> Clone". For the source partition, choose the entire C drive (this will select two partitions. For the destination partition, choose the entire new drive (this was drive 'D' on my machine). When the wizard gives you the option to choose advance settings, do so. Select "command line options". Enter "-ib" as a command line option. This option causes Ghost to copy the entire book track, rather than just the boot sector. The X40 uses more of the boot track than just the boot sector, and if you do not specify this switch, the machine will not boot from the new hard drive. NOTE: The consensus is now that you must run Ghost from DOS to get the clone to work. That is, run Ghost from a separate boot disk, e.g. a CD.
4. Obsolete: If your old hard drive is nearly full and highly fragmented, Ghost may complain that it does not have enough contiguous space to create its virtual partion. If this happens, you have two options. The first is to defragment your hard drive in Windows, and then retry. To defagment, right-click on the hard drive in the Windows explorer, then choose "Tools" and "Defragment Now". This may take several hours. If the Defagmenter complains that it has less than 15% free space, you can free up some space by emptying the cache in your internet browser(s) and by emptying the desktop trash. The other option (besides defragmenting) is to run Ghost off of a separate boot device. This is even more complicated and I won't explain it here.
4. Install new hard drive into the Thinkpad itself:
1. If you've successfully made it to here, you're almost done. DO NOT attempt to boot the machine off of the *new* hard drive while the new hard drive is in the dockstation. When I did this, it did something to Windows that made it unbootable, and I had to redo the Ghosting.
2. Instead, move the new hard drive into the thinkpad itself. Do this with the following steps. First, remove the new hard drive from the dock station and from the dock station HDD adaptor. Then, take the old hard drive out of your machine by removing the screw on the underside at the left front corner of the thinkpad and pulling the drive out (instructions for this are in your original Thinkpad documentation). Once you've removed the old hard drive from the machine, it will still be attached to the black frontpiece. Remove this frontpiece by gently prying the tabs away from the hard drive screws. You do not remove the hard drive screws (and shouldn't). Next, put the black frontpiece onto the new hard drive by popping the tabs over the screws, and install the new hard drive into the laptop.
5. Cleanup:
1. Boot the machine to verify that everything works with the new hard drive. (If it doesn't, try reGhosting, this time by running Ghost from DOS mode). Verify that the new hard drive size is bigger by right-clicking on the hard drive.
2. Shutdown, then boot into the BIOS (press F1).
3. Change the "Security -> Access IBM Predesktop Area" setting back to "Normal". Reboot.
6. You're done! If these directions worked for you and you're happy, I accept beer: 'Bill Mark; 1605 Pearl St. Austin, TX 78701'

Comments from other people

* John King pointed out several bits of useful information: First, there is an IBM "white paper" which discusses the hidden partition, and describes some alternative strategies for backing it up and restoring it. A copy of the white paper is here. John recommends looking at the Appendix, pp. 9-11. However, the procedures describe there have complications of their own.

John King and Anthony Barron both had trouble with the original procedure I described above. The consensus is now that it is necessary to run Ghost in DOS mode (e.g. off of a separate boot disk) to get the process to work correctly.
* CH Tan figured out how to clone the drive over the network. His description of how to do it is here
* CH Tan also says:

Also, in your web page write-up, you might want to inform Thinkpad
users that IBM uses 2 kinds of HPAs as mentioned in their white-paper.
The old one used a hidden 'service partition' ala Dell today, while
newer Thinkpads will use the HPA as described in the white-paper. I'm
fairly confident that Ghost can handle the old-style hidden service
partition albeit the Thinkpad BIOS must first be told to let it be
visible.

And also, since the newer HPA feature involves the BIOS telling the
HDD controller to hide and remap the HDD sector range, ghosting and
restoring *must* only be done on a Thinkpad and not outside some
normal PC like what was done by my Joe ComputerGuy.

serpico
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#2 Post by serpico » Fri Feb 01, 2008 10:07 am

My disk has the Thinkpad hidden partition, a boot partition containing XP, and a data partition.

If I only wanted to make a Ghost copy of the boot partition, can I:
1. skip the bios step
2. use Ghost from within XP
3. skip the -ib parameter

I just want a good copy of the boot/XP partition that I can restore back to the disk every year or two, once the operating system gets too bloated and bogged down.
T430: i5-3320M(2.6GHz), 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 14" 1600x900, NVIDIA NVS 5400M 1GB
W510: i7-720QM(1.6GHz), 8GB RAM, 240GB SSD, 15.6" 1600x900, 1GB nVIDIA Quadro FX 880M
T410s: Core i5 2.53GHz, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 14.1" 1440x900
T60
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#3 Post by RealBlackStuff » Fri Feb 01, 2008 12:06 pm

My advice: forget about the whole Ghost bloatware and its numerous incompatibilities with their different versions.
Go get Acronis Trueimage from http://www.acronis.com
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
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serpico
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#4 Post by serpico » Fri Feb 01, 2008 12:11 pm

RealBlackStuff wrote:My advice: forget about the whole Ghost bloatware and its numerous incompatibilities with their different versions.
Go get Acronis Trueimage from http://www.acronis.com
Thanks, but since I already have Ghost, I think I'll stick with it. Besides, I've heard lots of negative things about TrueImage.
T430: i5-3320M(2.6GHz), 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 14" 1600x900, NVIDIA NVS 5400M 1GB
W510: i7-720QM(1.6GHz), 8GB RAM, 240GB SSD, 15.6" 1600x900, 1GB nVIDIA Quadro FX 880M
T410s: Core i5 2.53GHz, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 14.1" 1440x900
T60
X60

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#5 Post by rkawakami » Fri Feb 01, 2008 12:50 pm

You should be able to do a partition-to-partition copy. I just used a Ghost 2003 boot floppy to image a T23 WinXP installation onto a newly arrived 60GB drive. Said drive still appears to have the original Rescue and Recovery partition from when the drive was installed in a T43p system (according to the seller I got the HD from).

I can't knock TrueImage since I've never used it. I've read lots of negative things about Ghost as well but I've been using it for a couple of years and it works fine for what I need it for. I don't use the Windows version; I made the boot floppy and have the equipment necessary for connecting everything at the same time (laptop and external floppy drive connected to a port replicator and an Ultrabay HD adapter).
Ray Kawakami
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serpico
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#6 Post by serpico » Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:00 pm

rkawakami wrote:You should be able to do a partition-to-partition copy. I just used a Ghost 2003 boot floppy to image a T23 WinXP installation onto a newly arrived 60GB drive. Said drive still appears to have the original Rescue and Recovery partition from when the drive was installed in a T43p system (according to the seller I got the HD from).

I can't knock TrueImage since I've never used it. I've read lots of negative things about Ghost as well but I've been using it for a couple of years and it works fine for what I need it for. I don't use the Windows version; I made the boot floppy and have the equipment necessary for connecting everything at the same time (laptop and external floppy drive connected to a port replicator and an Ultrabay HD adapter).
Yeah, it worked just fine.

As for Ghost, yes, it has it's problems, but it usually works. Lots of people have discovered the hard way that TrueImage often fails.
T430: i5-3320M(2.6GHz), 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 14" 1600x900, NVIDIA NVS 5400M 1GB
W510: i7-720QM(1.6GHz), 8GB RAM, 240GB SSD, 15.6" 1600x900, 1GB nVIDIA Quadro FX 880M
T410s: Core i5 2.53GHz, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 14.1" 1440x900
T60
X60

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#7 Post by bill bolton » Fri Feb 01, 2008 8:05 pm

serpico wrote:As for Ghost, yes, it has it's problems
In my experience it has a HUGE number of problems!

Cheers,

Bill B.

judithara
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Re: Thinkpad Won't Boot After Using Norton Ghost

#8 Post by judithara » Fri Oct 30, 2009 6:44 am

How can I delete Norton from my computer. It seems to really slow down everything I try to do. Suggestions? My computer seems to be really slow lately and I believe Norton is the problem. I know you need an anti-virus program, any suggestions as to a better one and how I can get rid of this monster?
___________________
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Last edited by judithara on Fri Nov 06, 2009 1:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

GomJabbar
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Re: Thinkpad Won't Boot After Using Norton Ghost

#9 Post by GomJabbar » Fri Oct 30, 2009 6:54 am

First, you can remove Norton and Symantec software from Add or Remove Programs (XP) or from Programs and Features (Vista and Win 7).

You can also run the Norton Removal Tool to make sure you got rid of all traces of Norton AV.
Download and run the Norton Removal Tool
DKB

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Re: Thinkpad Won't Boot After Using Norton Ghost

#10 Post by mherman346 » Sat Oct 31, 2015 12:30 pm

I used Acronis TruImage to completely clone an image of my T60 Lenovo system on to a larger HDD
... but it required these steps first:

0. Power off the system.
1. press key F1 on power on, to enter BIOS.
2. select Setup,
3. then select Security from the list [Config, Date/Time, Security, Startup, Restart, HDD Diag]
4. then select Predesktop Area
5. then select Access Predesktop Area
6. then select Disable

Now save settings, reboot, and now the Clone with Acronis TruImage will work successfully.

After you replace the internal HDD with the new one:
Follow the steps above, and at step 6, select Normal
Now you are again protected better against virus attacks...


Best,
Michael

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