A norton removal tool!!!

Hi Christer

This is not a rumour - this is fact and the way in which Ghost 9 works, entirely in Windows - unless I am sadly mistaken See the screen shot - Back up drive (screenshot) makes an image of the drive in a location of your choice - I use an external USB drive.

I made a Ghost 9 backup of my operating partition, from Windows (the only way) only yesterday and carried on using the computer while it was running.

I use Ghost 9 as a second line of defence, but have never used the Restore function in anger. My first line of defence for the Operating System is ASR - Automated System Recovery - an integral part of XP Pro which makes a ghost image of the drive.

For the benefit of those not familiar with ASR the backup/image must be on another drive - that's logical as part of the recovery process is a format of the drive to be recovered and a floppy disk containing information about the backup is also produced during the backup process.

To restore the computer boot from the XP CD and press F2 to initiate ASR - the disk is formatted and a fresh copy of XP installed and then, as if by magic, the floppy kicks in and using the information on that the system is restored to the backup state - all settings, programs, data, etc that were originally on the drive.

It works and works well - I have used it on more than one occasion. You might find that the odd setting has not come back, but this is nothing compared with the hours/days necessary to get the PC back to where it was following a clean install. Of course, if there are problems on the drive these will be restored as well if they existed when the backup was made

Important to keep the ASR backup current - I tend to make one at least once a month and after any major changes to the system in terms of hardware/software.

 

Hi Pete!

The rumour is that Symantec actually has written an article, descibing how it is done. I know that it creates an image of a running system and the rumoured article would possibly convince disbelievers like Yours truly.

Thanks for the explanation of ASR. I wasn't aware of ASR doing a fromat and reinstall and then applying the "image" to get it back to "user customized" state, including user data and all.

Christer

 

Hi Christer

Is this the article ? ....

How Virtual Volume Imaging (V2i) handles user changes during the backup process

 

Hi Pete!

It may be but they didn't overdo the explaining and it leaves me with a number of questions:

I've heard about the "snapshot" before (when it was still PowerQuest) but am concerned about the time it takes to create it. How much of the system partition is included in the "snapshot "? Would it be possible that things change between the start of the "snapshot" and the end of it which would make it inconsistent?

The "snapshot" is temporarily stored in memory. Which memory? RAM? Pagefile? A dedicated "virtual partition" somewhere?

Maybe I'm too technical about this but the explanation is similar to:

Q: How does a car work?
A: It has a rear view mirror!

Thanks for posting the link,
Christer
(still not convinced)

 

I'm not sure but as I understand it, OEM is sold by a manufacturer at a lower price but must be sold "with hardware ". The local shop where I bring my business also builds computers to customers specifications and is qualified as an OEM. The seller should provide support, not Symantec.

Since I wasn't sure, I made a trial installation of Ghost 2003 on an old LapTop which has no other Symantec products installed, to verify that LiveUpdate is included in the installation. It is and updates are free.

Now it will take Ghost 2003 ~5 minutes to remove itself ...... ...... !

Christer