Customer Reviews

Norton Ghost 10.0 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(50)

 

 

Surely, "Norton Ghost 10.0 Computer Back-up and Recovery" has the capacity to provide your computer with a straightforward back-up and recovery utilities. It even assumes an intuitive Windows-like interface, which makes it easier for new users to adapt to its functional tools. And, if you ever have the misfortune of encountering general system or storage failure, you will thank God for having it in place.
However, as long as nothing calamitious happens to your computer's hard-disk, this software will remain a voracious resources-parasite in your PC. It does this by drastically slowing down everything that your PC does: including printing from a simple text file. Another problem is installation. I have been called upon a number of times to help a friend or a relative, whose computers either frozed or suffered rainbow-screen syndrome, in the course of installing this scary "Ghost-of-a-software". And the hardest part of the problem is that it leaves you with no clue of what had gone wrong. Both the software's users manual and Symantec's website did not mention the possibility of this problem occurring: thus, leaving you out in the cold.
Complete systems shut-down, or manual switch-off (where normal shut-down refused to comply), followed by a fresh reinstallation was able to resolve this problem in about 60% of the affected systems (which I handled). The remaining 40% waited endlessly and in vain for help from Symantec's support department. But nothing ever happened, because the guys at Symantec were as confused as we were regarding the problem. They gave one suggestion after another, all of which failed to provide any solution to the problem. We ended-up uninstalling the software from the affected computers. The owners are now left with newly purchased items, which they may never use.
But despite all these, if you are lucky enough to experience a hitch-free installation, this software will certainly serve you well. But be sure to increase your system's RAM (if it is anything less than 512MB). If you fail to do this, your PC will be crawling like a tortoise even when handling a very simple task. It does not matter whether your have the newest processor in town!
Another point to note is that this software runs only on Windows 2000 Professional with Service-Pack 4, and on Windows XP (both Home and Professional editions). Be sure that you already have Service-Pack 4 installed, if you plan to use it with Windows 2000 Pro. The software does not run on Windows 9X, NT, or ME.
As long as your computer has 512MB or more memory, and you are able to overcome a possible installation problem, be sure that this software will do for you everything which Symantec claimed that it does.
Finally, let it be known that this "Norton Ghost 10.0 Computer Back-up and Recovery" software would have been an undeniable first-class utility, had Symantec fixed the bugs, which are currently making it hard to install and use.

Running XP Home and installation and removal was a living hell.I upgraded from Ghost 2003 which must be removed prior to installing 10.0, but removal was incomplete and 10.0 took three trys to install. It slows down your entire system and had numerous lockups. Finally was able to remove 10.0 and reinstall 2003. No more freezes, lockups or errors. Stay away from this product. ( With the Amazon rebates I hope to only be out only $10.00 and 5 hrs of install/reinstall. Not recommended -Bad Product. E. Caldwell

I installed Norton Ghost 10.0 on a new Windows XP SP2 computer and it ran successfully for three days and then suddenly locked the computer. Thinking this was a fluke, I powered off the computer and rebooted into Windows XP. No matter what settings I used (including disabling automatic backups completely), Norton Ghost 10.0 consistently locks the computer within three hours of booting. I even reinstalled Windows XP SP2 from scratch followed by installing only Norton Ghost 10.0 in an attempt to narrow the problem (e.g. removing Norton Internet Security from the equation). Within a couple of days, Norton Ghost began hanging the computer again.

The automated snapshot facility is apparently intended to replace or supplement Windows Restore Points, but it is fatally flawed as well. Windows Restore successfully creates restore points upon installation of new software whereas Norton Ghost 10.0 seems to create a restore point anytime a mouse comes near an installation package or application with setup (and perhaps other keywords) in its name. Of course of the weekend that it was working (before it began locking the computer), it had created over 150 restore points.

The worst aspect of Norton Ghost 10.0 in my opinion is that the interface is extremely confusing whereas Ghost 2003 was at least somewhat intuitive. I have used Norton Ghost 2003 successfully for over a year, including restoring files and folders after reinstalling the operating system and (for the most part) it just works.

In the end, I tossed Norton Ghost 10.0 into the trash and went back to Norton Ghost 2003.

I have tried numerous times to copy my 200 gig Maxtor SATA drive to a 250gig Western Digital IDE drive. Its never worked right. On 2nd use it failed completely. On 1st and 3rd attempts all data went fine, but the operating system did not copy. On switching master (200gigMax) with slave (250gigWD) system seemed to be booting fine, then stopped at Windows logo. Therefore, am losing valuable time and cannot setup my new computer. Was planning on using the old drive as backup drive. Unfortunately it must still be the primary drive as Norton Ghost 10.0 DOES NOT WORK. I have had to re-write some programs to write data to the back up drive. Even tried booting from a 3rd drive (C:)Hitachi IDE 40gig), and copying (E:)200gigMax --> (F:)250gigWD. This caused whole thing to fail 10percent through its routine. Symantec has some cryptic note on their web page about licening issues in WindowsXP. Perhaps MicroSoft have figured out way to make Ghost not work. Who knows. Also didnt like sneeky and corrupt way Ghost 10.0 makes you log onto the internet to quote activate unquote Ghost. No where on package does it say this is necessary. WHAT IF YOU DONT HAVE INTERNET CONNECTION? This could be a problem if your computer is crashing and you must back up fast. Bought it for $70 US dollars at New York City Best Buy (23rd Street). QuasiNerds there said they all use it and its excellent. I've never used Norton Ghost 2003 or any other Ghost. As far as I can tell it is good only for backing up data and NOT the OS. Computer being used is a 3.0gh IBM ultra small form factor, w 400 speed RAM.

I am in computer field for 15 years and learned hard way that you can not rely on backup software until you actually do restore procedure. I got version of Symantec Ghost 10 and have to do a simple task : clone one Hard drive 40GB to another 120GB drive. Ghost has an option to clone hard drives. I run this option and got error when process was almost 99% complete.
Then I tried to restore backup image into new hard drive - the same result. I called tech support - they did not have any suggestion except move my backup from networked drive to local. I did - the same result. Well, next day I installed Acronis True Image - cometitor of Ghost - and accomplish my task in 30 min.
I used before Powerquest Drive Image - it was excellent product before Symantec purchased the company.
To be short - if you want to have a reliable backup of entire hard drive - Ghost should be NOT in your shopping list.

Norton Ghost reeks of being a scam. Drive cloning simply did not work at all. I tried it several times, making sure to click copy mbr and set drive to active (it's a laptop hard drive, cloned with a usb enclosure). Files do transfer fine and dandy as I can see them copied. Yet to no avail would it boot up -- just froze itself. I repeated process several times in case there was some error on my part. Nope, no success. Spent hours upon hours going no where. Norton's website is an awful mess, apparently designed by high school students, so no help there. Then I took a suggestion to try Acronis Trueimage, as it apparently was a product that could do the same job -- just used demo version downloaded from their website -- and it worked without a hitch the first time -- my cloned drive actually booted just fine, as it was supposed to. Therefore there was nothing wrong with the hardware end. Ghost simply is a scam that does not work. An investigation should be engaged for the consumer scam that is going on with this product.

I guess the title says it all. I purchased this software to transfer my 40GB to a new 120GB and to perform backups. I cringe at the thought of having to dig out a dozen + disks and restoring my system. I spent 2 weeks trying to get this thing to work. I did everything I could and still got errors while trying to copy the hard drive. By the way Ghost took about 5 hours each time and always failed in the last few minutes of the operation. So than I went to Symantic's maze of a website to find out what to do. I tried everything they said on the sight and nothing worked. I finally gave up and thought as long as it will backup my system to the 120GB than if something fails or happens I can restore. Well, the backup ran without error. I than caught some crazy Spyware/Trojan that Norton Antivirus couldn't delete (This is very common, and you have to basically go in and get rid of it yourself). So I started following these directions I had retrieved from the internet on removing the "virus" from my registry and deleting the DLLs. When I tried to reboot my system, it wouldn't boot. No problem, restore my back up. No dice! The back up couldn't restore because of some crazy error the system was giving me. Long story short, I fixed my system through safe mode and used the Norton Ghost disk as a Frisbee out the window. I than looked around and found Acronis 9.0 True Image. In 45 minutes it copied my drive to my 120 GB without even a glitch. Then I tested the backup/restore procedure, and it also worked. The other plus is that it only took 45 minutes to copy my drive. Get Acronis 9.0 trial version and give it a try. I think you will be pleased with the results. Also, if you need Ghost, I think there is a disk outside my house in the street you can use.

I am running W2K Pro SP4 with all the latest patches and fixes from Windows.

I have tended to avoid Symantec products and I should have continued to due so. The product installed fine as best I could tell and the system recovery seemed to be OK. So I backed up my 1st drive to my 2nd drive and all seemed OK until I tried to get the properties of the 2nd drive, Windows Explorer caused an error. I could do properties on the other drive and any of the folders I tried on either drive, but each attempt at properties on the 2nd drive was errored, whether I tried in Explorer or My Computer.

I submitted an error to Symantec Support (one of the worst designed support area I've ever seen) and got an automated response that I would be contacted in 2 or 3 days. It has now been 3 weeks and 2 days and I have not heard from them. Today I received notice that they would not be honoring my rebate request. It seems in keeping with my experience.

I will be trashing Ghost 10 and installing Acronis.

Anybody want to buy (make best offer) a very slightly used really bad product?

I periodically backed up C: drive (approx 40GB) onto a separate 160GB drive making complete backups (not incremental). After needing to reinstall XP on a clean drive, 3 of the four backups were not readable. The readable backup has a moderate number of seemingly random subdirectories that are empty when they should have contained files. Thus, a casual check of a backup would have you think it is really complete when it may not be.

Previous editions seem to have had a command line option to explore files (.gho)that are "corrupted" but it does not work on Ghost 10 files (.2vi). Symantec's help for error EA39070A was not helpful.

I have been using Ghost since it was version 2002. Ghost 9 was a big change but I find the update useful. However Ghost 10 is entirely different. Everything about it just SUCKS! Nothing works, UI, documentation, EVERYTHING! The most basic function - restore, FAILED!!! Thank goodness I didn't throw away my Ghost 9.