Damn, ye kinna read my mind David!?!? 
I mentally switched, while writing that, from Ghost to the Symantec system
security I had. There they do have drivers and I of course decided to use DV
on them. They failed. Miserably. Yes, Ghost uses DOS, whereas ShadowProtect
uses a windows pre-boot environment and works a little bit more
intelligently, plus it activley updates the backup on a scheduled basis in
the background. The fact is that of all the barebones backup I have used,
Ghost has a history of being the most unreliable and catastrophic.
My solution to the OP question was a combination of XP/Vista SystemRestore
with Complete PC Backup or ShadowProtect as the ultimate hammer to get to a
pristine install environment. I also periodically deleted the OEM*.*NF files
that had my drivers names in it. Then I used a DOS command line. Now I would
write a Powershell script that could be used to do the needed cleanup,
including registry entries, or possibly control the entire shebang.
The personal opinion of
Gary G. Little
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of David Craig
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 8:17 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re:[ntdev] Using ‘devcon dp_delete’ to purge the system of third
party driver files
What drivers? Symantec Ghost does not use drivers. It doesn’t use Windows,
but DOS. I think there are some network drivers for the central server
storage of backup images, but I just use another hard drive for them, which
requires no drivers. I find the USB and 1394a drives do work most of the
time, but the latest few versions of Ghost have moved the code into the
executable instead of using a third party DOS driver. If you order Symantec
Ghost you can get maintenance support too since the minimum purchase is 5
licenses to start. I think you can purchase them in various quantities
after the first purchase. That is sometimes expensive, but the product is
marketed to corporations and not the consumer market. They have a Norton
Ghost for consumers which is for backing up and I use it too. That version
works under Windows and allows continued use of the machine during the
backup. It has full and incremental capabilities also with scheduling. It
used to be called DriveImage before Symantec bought PowerQuest.
“Gary G. Little” wrote in message
news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> Windows Complete PC Backup is, in my opinion, superior to anything that
> Symantec has, or ever had … comes with the operating system … and you
> don’t have the boluxed up Symantec drivers that fail Driver Verifier. Ok
> …
> I decided Ghost was crap when it hosed my boot back in XP and they want
> $95
> for me to report the frigging bug. That was 6 years ago. Tried it again 3
> years ago at Seagate and still found it crap. But that is my opinion.
>
> If you REALLY want to pay for barebones back and get an active, scheduled
> backup, then StorageCrafts ShadowProtect is what I would get.
>
> Hmmm … guess it won’t do any good to send my resume to Symantec, now
> will
> it? 
>
> The personal opinion of
> Gary G. Little
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
> [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of David Craig
> Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 11:50 AM
> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> Subject: Re:[ntdev] Using ‘devcon dp_delete’ to purge the system of third
> party driver files
>
> Symantec Ghost works very well. I can restore any image even for Win7 in
> less than 10 minutes (most less than 3 minutes) since the only thing is
> the
> patched OS and a few tools in the image.
>
> wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
>>I have found that once I have a base level machine ready to install my
>>drivers I do a manual System Restore Point. When I have sufficiently
>>mangled the OS with my driver testing I do a System Restore from the
>>manual
>
>>one I created.
>>
>> Works for me.
>>
>> Larry C
>>
>
>
>
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