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I just installed a brand-new internal WD hard drive and it's been working great. I installed Norton Ghost 2003 on my system (my first time using the program), and was prompted to reboot in order for Norton Ghost to "recognize" my hard drive so I could do my first backup image. When I rebooted, I got the error "operating system not found." Upon attempts to reboot the system, I repeatedly got the same error. I called Symantec tech support ($30 a pop) and the tech rep walked me through some commands that I didn't understand and came to the "conclusion" that I had something called DDO (dynamic drive overlay) on my system, and that Norton Ghost was incompatible with this. He further stated that my DDO was "broken" (his term) and recommended that I contact WD for help in "reconstructing" the DDO. I contacted WD and we ascertained that my hard drive was indeed installed properly, and through WD's Data Lifeguard tools (that I had on a bootable floppy) she further claimed that DDO was never installed on this drive in the first place (because there would have been no need for it.) But what's interesting is when I first attempt to boot, I get a blue screen in the middle of the black one saying Western Digital Dynamic Drive Overlay V9.85. Further down, however, it says "DDO not loaded." I have since been referred to WD's Level 2 tech support but cannot contact them until Monday night. In the meantime I thought I would post this to see if anyone else has had this happen to them, and what they might have done to fix it. All of my data is on this drive ONLY at this point, and I need to at least get Windows to load so that I can simply copy my stuff to my new external firewire drive in case I need to reformat my hard drive. (At this point I don't think I ever want to try Norton Ghost again!) Please, can anyone help? My system specs follow:
HARDWARE SETUP
AMD Athlon 1600
80gig WD internal hard drive in Primary Master
DVD-ROM in Primary Slave
512megs DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card
OS: WindowsXP Home SP1, NTFS
Application: Norton Ghost 2003 retail
I contacted my company's IT department and even they could not help me; they had never heard of DDO. It was suggested that I attempt to reload the OS on top of the existing installation, but I am afraid that might damage or erase my data. The WD tech rep advised me to wait until I am able to contact their Level 2 tech support staff. If I knew I could do this without damaging my data, I would do it and just reformat my drive. I find it hard to believe that I have no way to even uninstall Ghost at this point. There is no documentation in the Ghost manual to suggest this could be a problem so I am at my wits' end. What do y'all think?
Thanks in advance for any help; I learned about this site through PC Magazine so I trust you.
-gretch
EDIT: Contacted PCPinpoint and spent close to 4 hours trying to remedy this problem to no avail (on an $18 trial subscription). My WinXP OS is definitely on the computer, and all my data appears to be intact. But no one can tell me how to extract this data short of slaving my drive to another computer. I find this hard to believe! Why is there no way to copy my files? Why did Ghost screw up my system this badly? I am seriously close to crying - I HATE to cry! :(
HARDWARE SETUP
AMD Athlon 1600
80gig WD internal hard drive in Primary Master
DVD-ROM in Primary Slave
512megs DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card
OS: WindowsXP Home SP1, NTFS
Application: Norton Ghost 2003 retail
I contacted my company's IT department and even they could not help me; they had never heard of DDO. It was suggested that I attempt to reload the OS on top of the existing installation, but I am afraid that might damage or erase my data. The WD tech rep advised me to wait until I am able to contact their Level 2 tech support staff. If I knew I could do this without damaging my data, I would do it and just reformat my drive. I find it hard to believe that I have no way to even uninstall Ghost at this point. There is no documentation in the Ghost manual to suggest this could be a problem so I am at my wits' end. What do y'all think?
Thanks in advance for any help; I learned about this site through PC Magazine so I trust you.
-gretch
EDIT: Contacted PCPinpoint and spent close to 4 hours trying to remedy this problem to no avail (on an $18 trial subscription). My WinXP OS is definitely on the computer, and all my data appears to be intact. But no one can tell me how to extract this data short of slaving my drive to another computer. I find this hard to believe! Why is there no way to copy my files? Why did Ghost screw up my system this badly? I am seriously close to crying - I HATE to cry! :(