Help booting Symantec Rescue Disk - not enough memory to create ramdisk device

[ghostuser15]

I use Ghost 15 and it usually works great (I run Ghost recovery off a bootable grub4dos usb stick). I recently performed a cold backup of a PC using the Ghost 15 recovery environment. When restoring the backup from the Ghost recovery environment to the same PC, as the restore was 99% completed, I was prompted to enter an additional disk. Of course, I didn't have the disk the restore process was looking for and the restore process returned an error and did not successfully complete.

I understand that this is a bug in Ghost 15 and that the restore process somehow thinks I'm restoring to a different machine and is looking for files from Symantec's PC Anywhere. So I did as has been suggested in this forum and downloaded the Symantec Rescue Disk that comes with Symantec System Restore 2013. I copied the 32-bit ISO to my USB stick and created the following entry in menu.lst:

# Symantec System Recovery - Symantec Recovery Disk
title Symantec Recovery Disk
find --set-root /ISO/SSR11.0.1.47662_AllWin_English_SrdOnly.iso
map /ISO/SSR11.0.1.47662_AllWin_English_SrdOnly.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
chainloader (hd32)

The iso is contiguous on the USB stick. When launching, I immediately receive the following error message:

"There isn't enough memory available to create a ramdisk device." Error code is 0xc0000017

The system in question has 512MB of memory. I am able to boot the Ghost 15 ISO from the same USB stick and it's larger at 394MB while the SRD ISO is 381MB.

Any suggestions?

[ghostuser15]

Even though Ghost recovery asks for that disk and fails the restore at 99%, does the restore actually get done correctly and completely?

[Andreas_Horlach]

What is the error you are seeing at 99%? If the restore was a success and the driver is not necessary, you will be able to reboot into the OS. If not, the reboot is typically stopped by a BSOD with a STOP 07 error.

The Symantec System Recovery Disk for 2013 requires a minimum of 1 GB of RAM to run. If your computer's video card is configured to share your computer's RAM, you might need more than 1 GB of RAM. (See page 238: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=DOC6256&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&...)

[ghostuser15]

At the 99% mark on the restore using Ghost, I am prompted to insert a disk (I've used Ghost recovery many times, and this is the first time I've seen this prompt; it's also the first time I've backed up and restored on this particular machine). I'll have to give it another try so I can write down the prompt. When I hit cancel (since I do not have the disk being requested), there is an error message and the restore aborts. Again, I'll redo the restore and write down the error message. I am able to boot into XP on that machine, which is why I'm wondering if Ghost actually completes the restore despite not having the requested disk and the restore process not reaching the 100% mark successfully.

[Andreas_Horlach]

Yes, in this case, if it gets to 99% and the machine reboots into Windows after you cancel, the restore has completed succesfully and you are set. No need to redo the restore. 

(You may be seeing the error ""Please insert Recovery Disk. Press OK to continue or cancel to abort.". This could mean that you simply need to recreate or re-download the Ghost 15 ISO.)

[ghostuser15]

Yes, that's the message I got at the 99% mark on the restore. I don't know if it would have rebooted into Windows because I didn't check the option to reboot after restore.

Not sure I follow your response to the "Please insert Recovery Disk prompt", "This could mean that you simply need to recreate or re-download the Ghost 15 ISO."

The Ghost 15 ISO that I'm using off the USB stick has worked fine in the past (off the same USB stick too). Do you think replacing it with another would make any difference?

Or did you mean that, at that message, I point the browser at the iso? Since I'm not sure how I could mount the iso inside the Ghost recovery environment, I guess I could burn the iso to a cd and point the browser to that?

[ghostuser15]

OK, I just ran Ghost 15 recovery to restore the same recovery point that didn't completely restore in prior attempts. This time restore completed (and rebooted into Windows since I had checked the reboot after restore option).

The other difference is that I did NOT get a warning message just before the restore began - the message said something about restoring to a different/changed system could cause problems and I may need other disks, etc. I had never seen that warning in all my prior uses of Ghost recovery, but saw it before the 3 failed attempts to restore to this particular machine. So I guess somehow the bug that thinks that I'm restoring a recovery point to a different machine kicked in and resulted in those 99% restores with the request to "Please insert Recovery Disk". And for whatever reason, the bug did not kick in on my most recent attempt, which completed just fine.

I guess this leaves me wondering if there is any way to avoid the bug kicking in?

[ghostuser15]

Made a second recovery point and tried to restore it. When I get to the "Completing the Recover My Computer Wizard" window and select 'Finish' to begin the restore, the warning message I described earlier appears, and this time I wrote it down: "You will lose all changes made since the recovery point. . . " Performing a Restore Anywhere to hardware that is significantly different may require you to. . . " So when that message doesn't appear, the restore completes normally. When that message appears, the restore will get to 99% and ask for a recovery disk and then errors out with a seemingly incomplete recovery, but it appears the restore is completed anyway, but it sure doesn't leave you feeling warm and fuzzy. And it seems that to get the nice warm and fuzzy 100% completed recovery process, you have to repeatedly boot into Ghost recovery and set up the restore and hope you don't get the above warning message.

[Andreas_Horlach]

The error typically indicates a corrupt ISO. As it happened once with you, my guess is there was some data loss along the way from the mounted ISO, which seems to have been corrected after a reboot.

The grub4dos boot method is something I haven't used before so I am not sure if that was a factor, but it may be a good idea to create a bootable USB drive through the Windows interface. 

[ghostuser15]

Got a link on how to create the bootable USB drive you are suggesting? I'll give that a shot.

[Andreas_Horlach]

Sure. Go to page 41 of this user's guide for instructions: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=DOC6256&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&...

[Dave_H1 · Accepted solution]

The problem your seeing is indeed a bug that happens with Ghost 15 when trying to restore a "cold image" made from the recovery disk.

As you stated, Ghost 15 "thinks" that your restoring the image onto a different system and tries to do a "restore anywhere". This only happens with images made from the recovery disc because the restore anywhere feature is disabled in the program when making images from inside windows.

When it tells you to insert the recovery disk, it's looking for the driver database that is not present on the Ghost 15 recovery disc.  Since it can't find the database it asks for the recovery disc because it thinks you don't have it in the system. SSR discs have a folder "DDB" that is not present on the Ghost discs.

Like Andy mentioned, at that point the recovery is normally done and in "most" cases you can simply reboot the system and it will boot windows with no problems.  However in some cases the first part of the restore anywhere process has begun and you will find that some changes have been made to windows, the network adapters and USB devices have been removed and when windows reinstalls those devices you have lost any LAN and WiFi settings and passwords.

There are 3 ways to get around this problem. One is to do the restore with a SSR 2011 recovery disc and uncheck the option to do the "restore anywhere".  Second option is to use a Ghost 14 recovery disc. Third option is to only make images from inside windows.

The SSR 2011 disc is based on Vista just like the Ghost 15 disc so it's not going to require more RAM like the SSR 2013 disc needs being based on Windows 7. 

BTW- booting the ISO with Grub has noting to do with the problem your seeing, I do the same thing on a couple of my systems. I also have an XP system that does the exact same thing whenever I do a restore from a cold image.

Dave

[ghostuser15]

The SSR 2011 recovery disc sounds like the best solution (short of Ghost 15 being fixed, which I assume is not going to happen). I'd rather not be forced to downgrade to Ghost 14, and I'm not a fan of hot imaging.

Symantec mods, please could you PM me a link to the SSR 2011 recovery iso?

[Andreas_Horlach]

You can restore images with the SRD, but cold imaging from the SRD requires a licensed recovery disk. SSR 2011 is no longer available. Here is the link to 2013:

https://www4.symantec.com/Vrt/offer?a_id=156805 

The trial does allow you to download a recoery disk (SRD), which is in trial mode (no cold imaging).  

[ghostuser15]

The 2013 SRD won't work for me as discussed earlier - I'm trying to restore to a system with less than 1gb of RAM.

I don't need the 2011 SRD to cold image - I can do that just fine with my Ghost 15 SRD. I just need the 2011 SRD to restore images (and only when the Ghost 15 bug acts up; I've used Ghost 15 for a long time without experiencing this bug).

[Andreas_Horlach · Accepted solution]

Send me a private message...

[Dave_H1]

If you still need help, please feel free to contact me here, or through the Norton forum.

http://community.norton.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/27405

Dave