A ghost of the previous program

March 24, 2006 11:17 AM

I just bought Norton Ghost 10.0. It is complete crap, as far as I can tell. What can I do, either to make it work the way I want, or to actually return it for a refund?

It has been a while since I've used Ghost. I remember it working decently before-- the problem has always been that the boot CD doesn't always support all of your devices properly, particularly USB devices, etc.

So I bought the most recent version, thinking, "Hey, at least the boot disk will be nice and up to date."

Strangely enough, they expect that the most common mode of usage is that you INSTALL it in WindowsXP, and it makes image based backups of your machine periodically. While you system is running, which seems insane.

This might be okay, except that it doesn't work. It continually fails with a CRC error. It appears that there is a way I can disable this error checking, but that doesn't sound like a good idea!

At this point, I feel that I didn't get what I expected when I bought the program. It is significantly different than earlier versions, with the main functionality (in my opinion) gone.

They obviously knew that this might be an issue, so they include a copy of Norton Ghost 2003. This one, however, won't load the USB driver properly, making it unusable.

At this point, honestly, I just want to return it! Can I?

posted by gregvr to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Well, you would return it to your retailer, but in most cases retailers will not accept returned software unless the media itself is bad. Otherwise you could buy, install, return.

And more then that, almost all software ships with EULAS that disclaim any and all liability for bad products.
posted by delmoi at 11:23 AM on March 24, 2006

If you want to do this, though I recommend burning a knoppix bootable CD and using dd_rescue. or some other OSS tool.
posted by delmoi at 11:25 AM on March 24, 2006

I would check with Symantec about their return policy. The policy is really what is going to determine if you can return it.

You might consider contacting their support group to complain about the problems you're having. They will log a case number for your issue, and if the issue cannot be resolved in a way that allows you to use the program as it is supposed to work, you can refer to that case number when containg them for a return. The more you complain about how it doesn't work the way you need it to, the more likely you are to get them to make things right.

I just checked their website, and they do have a return policy. I would check it out to see if your purchase is eligible for a refund.

If not, sell it on Ebay.
posted by Jim T at 11:58 AM on March 24, 2006

And it looks like you can request a refund directly from Symantec for a product you purchased from a retailer. It looks like a convoluted process, but it can be done.
posted by Jim T at 12:00 PM on March 24, 2006

Super, thanks Jim T. That's exactly what I was looking for. I don't want customer support, I don't want tech support, I just want my money back.

/prints out form, gets a pen
posted by gregvr at 12:21 PM on March 24, 2006

So let me get this straight, this latest version of Ghost cannot be used from a boot disk (floppy/CD/USB drive)?

If this is true, that's asinine. That's the only way I would ever want to use Ghost!
posted by Brian James at 2:14 PM on March 24, 2006

Ghost changed. It's not so much a drive imager anymore as a system backup tool.

If you buy it for live backups, it's great. if you want to use it for what it used to be good at, drive imaging, it's the wrong product.

It has to be the stupidest design decision _ever_.
posted by Malor at 2:49 PM on March 24, 2006

Echoing Malor, I upgraded from Ghost 2003 to 2005, and was immediately horrified. It did the exact same thing as the system hogging and interrupting your movie at the good part M$ System Restore, which is a continuous live backup. that's NOT what I bought the product for! I like having a stable set point at which I can go back to and have it be as fresh as yesterday, without hogging my system. Norton Ghost 2003 was the last, best version of it. If that doesn't work...I don't know, cry?
posted by gilgul at 8:26 PM on March 24, 2006

Before you give up here is an alternative: Use a Bart PE Windows Live CD to boot and run Ghost 2003 from there. With a live CD you get full USB support. An added bonus is that with the right driver pack you universal network support so no hunting down the right set of bootdisks to go with the network card you have. Just a thought.
posted by cm at 2:50 PM on March 25, 2006