Windows XP will not start, keeps restarting, cannont disable GoBack, cannot repair.
I tried to install a a wireless mouse using the floppy they gave me. The computer crashed.
When it restarted Norton GoBack gave a message saying the it has detected that the computer is unstable and it may be due to overclocking, memory or hard drive. When I get passed that the windows logo screen comes up.
Then I see the screen for System Mechanic (I ran system mechanics wizard before I installed the mouse) then the computer would restart.
I tried to start in safe mode but it would only restart.
I tried to GoBack to an earier point in time. I tried 20mins (didnt change anything) then I tried 2 horus (still didnt change anything) then I tried 8 hours eariler and recieved an error message saying the Norton Goback has to restart.
Then I tried to disable Norton GoBack but it also gave me an error message saying that it has to restart.
Now I am stuck and I cannot do a repair since GoBack is enable and the windows install does not detect the Windows partition when GoBack is enabled.
I even tried to do a "chkdsk /r" at the repair console and that did not change anything.
Reformating the hard drive is not an option, what can I do?
Do you have Windoze XP. If so gonna guess you have the Windows restore enabled??? Sounds like it. Got a conflict. Norton products SUCK. PERIOD.
Before we can do anthing need to know your OS.
If you re-read the thread, you will see that you have to create a DOS floppy and copy that file to it. You have to boot with the floppy and run the program.
Alright, it is working so far and I think everything is okay. Why does it do this? Is this caused by a virus? I should definately leave Norton GoBack off for good and just make sure to keep good copies of everything? Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it!
GoBack is wonderful when it works. When it goes bad, it will make your life a nightmare. It won't even let you format the drive sometimes.
Once you get some experience in these matters, it's time to graduate to Norton Ghost. If you have a separate drive or partition, you can run scheduled backup images of your entire system drive. When you restore those images, everything gets erased and replaced exactly as it was. Another benefit is that it won't affect performance 24/7. It only hurts performance when it's backing up.
Some of us prefer Acronis TrueImage to Ghost. (I have not used the latest Ghost, since Symatec bought PQ and DriveImage - but I have a lot of experience with earlier versions of both Ghost and DriveImage.) Plus it's cheaper and you can get a 15 day free trial. http://www.acronis.com
John, it isn't quite fair to pass judgement on something that you haven't tried. Ghost 9.0 and 10.0 are superior to True Image in some ways and *nothing* like the older DOS Ghost programs.
You are correct. However, I had way too many problems with Drive Image and it consistently failed to produce bootable images when doing hot imaging. And Ghost 2003 was a dog that constantly ran in the background. I have found TrueImage to be very dependable. Also, I have found it easy to teach naive users how to use the TI interface. Lastly, the OEM version lets you create a hidden recovery partition for customers and recovery disks. I don;t see anything like that for Ghost. I will try the latest Ghost but the higher price and activation requirement are burdensome over here where many (most) people do not have direct access to the Internet.
I actually liked Ghost 2003. The tray icon was just that - an icon. All it did was allow direct access to the backup and restore options. It didn't use any real resources. I also liked the way you could do a one-step hands off restore. My only real beef with it was that it couldn't be scheduled and a reboot was required for each action.
AFAIK, the standalone version of Ghost does not require activation.
The new version of Ghost does not allow a hands-off restore for the boot partition. You must boot from the CD for that. It does, however, allow real-time imaging, scheduling and incremental/differential backups. It also allows you to limit the number/size of the backups so that your storage medium doesn't overflow. Version 10.0 is much more refined as well. It does run in the background, but so does Acronis:
I was just dealing with a system with the GoBack problem described here. The gb_prog.exe /u thing didn't work (called the same program as was called on boot and it crashed in the same way). The CD from symantec (you can download a cd image from their web site) also ran the same program.
I was able to get the system to boot through into windows from time to time. But GoBack would instantly reboot the system as soon as windows was able to display a mouse pointer.
I ended up booting off a linux disk (Recovery Is Possible disk). Running fdisk I could see that the C: partition was type 0x44 (unknown). I changed the partition type to 7 (HPFS/NTFS) and now the system boots cleanly. The GoBack GUI still loads at boot, but it doesn't complain about anything and Windows doesn't restart right as the OS loads.
I *think* what's going on is that windows loads drivers based on partition IDs. I'm guessing that GoBack registers its own driver for partition type 0x44. If you change the partition type then windows no longer tries to load the driver. In addition to this changing the partition type might allow less-capable fdisk-like software to repartition/format the drive.
If you aren't familiar with linux and you want to do this then:
- burn a RIP disk (http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-r...looplinux/rip/)
- boot off it (select "skip keymap prompt")
- login as root
- run "fdisk /dev/hda" (that's IDE, if you are running SATA or something else then try running "sfdisk -l" to get a list of partitions that the kernel knows about)
- 'p' and enter will print the current partition table
- 't' and enter to change partition type
- change it to 7
- 'w' and enter will write the partition table
- 'shutdown -r now' will reboot the system (remove RIP disk)