I have hours and hours into making a Bootable CD that will run Ghost 8.x (because the Ghost Boot wizard *sucks*) so that I can restore a standard image in Dell PC's that have no floppies. I know I could just use a portable floppy but the idea here is: 1) So that those with almost no knowledge can do this with as little trouble as possible. The target users don't have a USB Floppy Drive. 2) It HAS to be possible and I just won't give up. I'm stubborn that way. LOL I have the Boot CD, and it's various program's drivers etc working so that machine boot's and goes all the way to trying to load Ghost (the Ghost executable is 1.36 MB By itself) and then I get an error saying the program is too large to load. I have already made sure that I am using Himem.sys and emm386 properly, am loading DOD high,UMB etc. I have stepped through the startup files during boot, and there are no missing files or errors. Now here's the "funny" part. If I just stick a floppy in a USB drive and try to run Ghost from the floppy, it works like a champ. Ghost loads and functions as one would expect. Here are my Autexec.bat, and Config.Sys files: Config.sys: [menu] menuitem=FROMFLPY, This computer was started from a Ghost boot disk menuitem=FROMCD, This computer was started from a CD created by Ghost.exe [FROMFLPY] DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM=OFF DEVICE=EMM386.EXE /RAM DEVICEHIGH=OAKCDROM.SYS /D:mscd001 [FROMCD] DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM=OFF DEVICE=EMM386.EXE /RAM DEVICEHIGH=OAKCDROM.SYS /D:mscd001 [COMMON] FILES=10 BUFFERS=10 DOS=HIGH,UMB STACKS=9,256 DEVICEHIGH=RAMDRIVE.SYS /E 2048 LASTDRIVE = Z _________________________________________ Autoexec.bat: @echo off SET TZ=GHO+05:00 prompt $p$g lh mscdex /L:D /d:mscd001 lh MOUSE.COM echo Loading Ghost... D: cd ghost GHOST.EXE -nousb ____________________________ I know the "Menu" regarding Floppy or CD is probably irrelevant since this is designed to work entirely from a CD, but I just didn't want to change what was working, and that part "ain't broke." Here is the list of files on the boot CD, just in case: Ghost ..... DIR (yes it contains Ghost.exe) Autoexec.bat Command.com Config.sys Emm386.exe Himem.sys Io.sys Mouse.com Mouse.ini Mscdex.exe Msdos.sys Oakcdrom.sys Ramdrive.sys ___________________________________ Any help you can offer to get over this one last hurtle would be much appreciated. Doug

Don't know if this will help at all but below is the contents of the Ghost 2003 Emergency recovery disks. Disk 1 GHOST empty 0KB USB 2 files total 245KB aspi2dos.sys 35 KB aspi4dos.sys 15 KB aspi8dos.sys 38 KB aspi8u2.sys 44 KB AUTOEXEC.BAT 1 KB COMMAND.COM 53 KB CONFIG.SYS 1 KB IBMBIO.COM 44 KB IBMDOS.COM 42 KB MOUSE.COM 37 KB MOUSE.INI 1 KB Disk 2 GHOST (Ghost.exe) 1001KB AUTOEXEC.BAT 1 KB

refer to : http://www.computing.net/windows200...

Hi Doug, OtheHill, mavis007, hi everyone I have a strong feeling that with simply increasing the number of files and buffers to respectively 60 and 20 should get you going and finish your quest. You might consider to instead of using DEVICE=EMM386.EXE /RAM in your Config.sys file to use DEVICE=EMM386.EXE /NOEMS. Are you sure your CD-ROM drive is assigned the drive letter D:? I am asking because I noticed you are also loading a RAM disk, why? What is your intention with SET TZ=GHO+05:00 in your Autoexec.bat? In random order some useful resources, one doesn't always have to reinvent the wheel by themselves. :-) How To Create A Bootable Ghost Rescue CD Tutorial (http://users.pandora.be/satcp/ghostresq01.htm) Creating Bootable CD/DVD's Without A:\Floppy Drive (http://nightowl.radified.com/bootcd/bootcdintro.html) Radified Guide to Norton Ghost (http://ghost.radified.com/) Best Regards and Wishes, The Count, Co-webmaster of mesich.com

Count, Thanks for your suggestion. I had a suspicion that the "Files" and "Buffers" settings might be the culprit. To be honest it has been so long since I regularly dealt with Config.sys and Auto exec, that i couldn't remember valid settings for files and buffers. I tried your setting and it works like a champ!. Now all I have to do is get some SATA optical disk drivers that will work in DOS so I can make a Ghost boot CD for PC's containing both types of optical drive! Wooooo Whoooooooo! To everyone who tried to help, thanks for your suggestions. I will try to return the favor here at Computing.net if I can. Thanks, Doug

Hi Doug, OtheHill, mavis007, hi everyone Glad to see I could have been of help. :-) Thanks for posting back, it's very much appreciated. The above settings for Files and Buffers are the recommendations as mentioned in the provided links, personally I have/had my Files and Buffers settings set to 90 and 40. Back in the old days I had the value for Stacks set to 0,000. You may also consider to add Smartdrv.exe to the root of your CD/DVD and add the line: lh Smartdrv.exe to your Autoexec.bat prior to loading Mscdex.exe. If you do, you may experience a slight improvement in performance. As for the SATA DOS driver, I found this one through the third link provided above. (http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1171774390) HTH Best Regards and Wishes, The Count, Co-webmaster of mesich.com

This might be a bit late. If you install ghost onto the Dell, & if you have a dvd/cd writer you can make a clone/image. The first disk in the set will be bootable. You don't have to install the full set, but the first disk will get you to the ghost (dos) interface. Failing that, Hirens Boot cd has a version of ghost that loads the usb dos drivers, so you could ghost to a usb drive. If, you just want to make your own ghost boot cd, as an exercise. I'll shut up & mind my own business. Before posting try google. Backup. Use anti virus software.