Ghost Solution Suite

Will Ghost Solution Suite be updated to support Windows 7?  I get the feeling Symantec is abandoning Ghost in favor of Altiris.

Ghost is the cloning engine of Altiris DS as well as GSS platform, so no it wont be abandoned. GSS with support for WIndows 7 release was supposed to happen this September but was postponed.

Postponed why?  There isn't even an announced beta yet and that was originally planned for June.

I believe quite a few staff were laid off across Symantec due to the world financial crisis a few months ago.
Thus it would not be surprising if all update programs were delayed as a consequence of the cost cutting measures introduced by many companies at this time.
We will just have to be patient, and pass the time by reviewing the market for compelling and competitive alternatives.

I just want to put my 2-cents worth ($10.00 these days) in encouraging Symantec to get the compatibility problem with Ghost and Windows 7 fixed ASAP; I have used Ghost for many years and depend upon it to keep valuable data backed up.and; I now find myself in the position where my ability to maintain valuable clients' data is questionable If Ghost is not soon updated for Windows 7 I will have to find an alternative to using it and I really don't want to go to another application. ; There will be quite a bit of work involved on my part to make the switch and I will probably never return to Ghost even after a fix becomes available if this happens I notice that I can still use Ghost to restore files from backups made under Vista even under Windows 7 - at least as much as I have experimented; I must also try and see if I can use Ghost to back up non-operating system files. If this works too, it will have taken off a lot of the pressure on me. The only thing I will then not be able to use Ghost for is to back up my C-drive (which is pure operating system - no documents if I can avoid it.) In the meantime I may be reduced to (ugh!) using Windows Backup for my C drive Does anyone else have any experience on what Ghost can and can't do under Windows 7 as of now?

Windows PE is free from Microsoft and can do image backups of hard disks including Windows 7, as the WAIK for Windows 7 includes the latest version of WinPE. It is also available today, so you can use this as an alternative tool until an updated version of Ghost is available.

I have a bootable USB drive running WinPE which I can also run Ghost32.exe from, giving me the choice of either solution depending on the O/S

Definately it is not abandoned!
Symantec is working on Win7 and Win 2k8 R2 support for Ghost and expected release is somewhere in Jan - Feb time frame.

With all the beta and RC candidate availability for Windows 7, and with Win 7 going to RTM back in August, why are we having to wait until Jan/Feb for Win7 and W2K8 R2 support?  That's 6 months after the RTM release.
Have the developers even started compiling a feature list yet?

Thank you for asking this very question. We're talking about just over a one year timeframe since the first public beta of Windows 7, mind you 7 was in closed beta before that. I need Windows 7 support now, as I did back in August when my organization got the Windows 7 RTM and started deploying it.

I doubt we will get an answer - or at least an honest one.
I think Symantec are resource limited, or not that committed to supporting their users, as there is really no other explanation for such a long delay in getting a product upgrade done. It's not as if Windows 7 or W2K8 R2 are massively different to Windows Vista and W2K8 R1, and there is no shortage of software vendors who have somehow managed  to ship updated versions of their software for Win 7, etc, concurrent with the Win 7 RTM. 
It's not as if Microsoft was unwilling to work with anyone and everyone to promote anything that might increase Win 7 sales after the failure of Vista to engage with corporates.  I too was involved with an early adopter program for Win 7 and there was no shortage of Win 7 beta drivers from the hardware suppliers to test against. So it would seem that Symantec was the only company not to join in the Win 7 party, preferring to stand alone on the sidelines, waiting to be asked to dance.

I am looking into MDT 2010 which is free from Microsoft...


I think that it is sad that Symantec is not on the ball on having this out.

We are not going towards Windows 7 for a while.

But we are starting to test it out.

And in the mean time, I will be studying up on Microsofts imaging process....

I must say that I am disapointed in this delay. It appears that Acronis has already been able to release a version that supports Windows 7. Your customers are not to be taken lightly. I will switch and that will be the last dime you receive for Norton Ghost. I have only had this for a few months. It appears I have made another mistake. A name is only as good as the product delivered today.

Personally, I trust Ghost and I hope that I won't be forced to switch to another product - but I will if I have to and it's unlikely I will return if that happens. Sorry, Norton, but your excuses don't wash - we've all known that Windows 7 was coming for a long time so it's not like you were taken by surprise. Taken by procrastination would be a better way to describe your problem now, I think. You aren't the first company that has discovered that its cutbacks during the slow-down of the economy got them in trouble.

Will this LU 5 fix problem with Windows 2008 and newer domains?

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/gss-202-joining-computers-domain-fails-odd-error-message

Of course Ghost team was thinking about Win7 long-long time ago. And about bunch of other very exciting features that Acronis has not even thought about. All preliminary testing that was done on pre-release versions indicated that there were no problems as compared to migrating from XP to Vista. And GSS 2.5 would be suitable for Win7 migration.
However customers would love to have a reassuring sticker saying that GSS 3.0 is Win7 capable - I understand that.

Sometimes decisions are made and company may regret them (or may not) but as yogeshsadhu was saying Ghost is not forgotten. There will be a release coming up - just later than expected. People have anticipated migrating to Vista shortly after it was released, which never eventuated. Hopefully same story will not repeat with Win7 but you never know.

In the meantime those loyal to Ghost, you can still use GSS 2.5 to migrate machines to Win7 - I doubt you will notice some (if any) glitches. Nothing has changed in NTFS itself, nothing has changed in the way partitions are booted (as compared to Vista) and not much changed that can affect cloning.

Can you explain your question in more detail?  I do not understand the reference to LU 5
What newer domain than windows 2008 are you referring to?

So you have a product tested successfully on pre-release versions of Windows 7, and a bunch of other very exciting features that Acronis has not even thought about. Yet it will still take another couple of quarters to get the product out.
By then, your hope that Acronis and others have not thought of these features may prove to be incorrect and you will be playing catch up. Every company has new features in hand for a new release, and there is a compelling logic to introducing updates to existing versions to support Win 7 and then bringing out a totally new version a few months later to get new revenue streams from their happy users, who did not have to wait forever for official Win 7 support.
Although you say that GSS 2.5 will be suitable for Win 7 migration - is this a position that the Symantec support departments share? If a GSS 2.5 user rings up with a Win 7 problem, will they be able to actually offer any help, or will they fall back on the position that "GSS 2.5 does not officially support Win 7".  If the latter, then the suitability of GSS 2.5 for Win 7 migration is frankly meaningless.

So Eugene, lets have a formal commitment from Symantec about Win 7 support for GSS 2.5

I cannot possibly give you any "commitments from Symantec" because I do not work for Symantec for the last five months or so. I (as many others from Ghost team) like helping our customers hence why still come to this forum. When I am talking about Win7 support vs Vista I am only talking from our Ghost dev team experience.

Maybe you are correct and perhaps Acronis may think of the same features or it may not. Fortunately or unfortunately but dev teams have very little influence over company decisions.

Sorry for my bad english:)

If you try to use GSS in 2008 domain or R2 (domain function level) it's unable create computer accounts. Reason is that GSS don't support 2008 domain default security settings.

"I was able to get around the problem you are describing with Server 2008 by changing the default domain controller policy to allow cryptography algorithms compatible with Windows NT 4.0.  I believe the policy is located here:
Default Domain Controller Policy-->Computer Configuration-->Policies-->Administrative Templates-->System-->Net Logon"

I don't have rights to change that policy and domain admin is saying fixit or use SCCM.

This reminds me of symatec's acquisitions of Winfax and GoBack. They were both great products that Symantec just totally abandoned from the day they got their hands on them. GoBack is the best single piece of software that I have ever found for quickly and easily solving problems. It is nothing but dust now.

I've been able to deploy Windows 7 using ghost solution suite 2.5 without issue, with PXE boot and WinPE. Just thought I'd let everyone know. There may not be 'official' support for it, but it DOES work. 

i don't know if this is the place to vent, but here it is !!!

Delay, resources, etc;  that just corp BS for we don't care.  i have 5 computers, on both win xp & vista.  i first started with Norton S&R ver 1 & upgraded to ver 2.  i also asked if Norton S&R would be upgraded, i was advised to UPGRADE to Ghost 14.  i have just finished upgrading / installing Ghost 14 to help familiarize me, prior to windows 7.  i was hoping that there would be a Ghost upgrade available with the public release of windows 7.  but NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!.  how much longer must we wait ????  maybe we all need to look somewhere else for our backup software.  BTW, how many of us also have another Symantec product that we are dependant on for our protection  ???  it really makes no sense to have mixed vendor software to fully protect our computers.  maybe Symantec will get the hint if we all switched everything to another vendor that is commited to support us !!!!   PLEASE, SYMANTEC, GET WITH THE PROGRAM.  WITHOUT US, YOUR CUSTOMERS, YOU MIGHT AS WELL FOLD UP YOUR TENTS AND DISAPPEAR IN THE NIGHT !!!

And Ghost Solution suite are not the same thing. VERY different products.

As I said in my post above, GSS 2.5 does work with Windows 7. 

It has worked fine for me as well, the only thing that hasn't worked as expected it if I try to do a clone with a configuration task. If I run the configuration task seperatly they both work fine.

This is the last statement, updated yesterday, about Ghost Solution Suite and Windows 7:

Ghost Solution Suite 2.5, the latest version, is not currently compatible with Windows 7. Symantec is working on an update to GSS 2.5 that will allow for installation as well as the cloning of Windows 7. We will update this article when that update is available.

Although unsupported the Ghost executables from GSS 2.5 LU3 (build 2165) may clone a Windows 7 file system when used in a PreOS environment.
There are a few things to consider if you plan to test the cloning of Windows 7:

• Do NOT install Ghost Solution Suite on the Windows 7 Operating System. Install it into XP or <st1:place w:st="on">Vista</st1:place> to then use the executables.
• We suggest that you use the Ghost Boot Wizard to create bootable media with the Ghost cloning Executables that can then either connect to a GhostCast Server session or clone to local hard drives .

From KB:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/on-technology.nsf/docid/2009052211051260

Very disappointing...

But I wanted to try SCCM anyway for OS deployment, so thanks for another reason to switch :)

The download page for Ghost 14 says it requires Microsoft's .NET framework, and MS's download page says .NET won't install on a 64-bit system (?!?)  So who's mistaken here?  How did you get it to install?
My XP machine died and was replaced with a Win 7 machine - I have no backups until I can get some version of Ghost to run, and I'm dying here. 
I have been advised to put the old backup HD in a USB enclosure, and go find an XP machine I can install the original Ghost on, to burn everything to CD/DVD, and physically transport it all back to the new machine.  Sure, but it would be so much easier to load Ghost here and access the drive directly, ya know...  If you can tell me Ghost 14 installed without error screens, I'll be happy to pay the $50 for the upgrade.
I can't believe Super Symantec missed the boat like this!

Ghost 14 is not a Ghost product line. It is rebranded backup consumer product from old Powerquest product line. It is built on the same techonology as Backup Exec system recovery so any questions will be better answered on that forum.

Real Ghost (back from old days) is part of Ghost solution suite. It is currently version 11.5 (GSS 2.5). This ghost will install and will clone Windows 7 (see above) but it has no official support for Windows 7 from Symantec because next release, which supposed to happen early September and to to contain full support for Windows 7 and other features was postponed until early new year.

Sorry for getting to the conversation late.  I have been trying to use GSS 2.5 to build a restore setup for Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit.  I am having the following issue.  If i restore the image and run configuration at the same time, the clone will succeed, and the configuration will automatically fail saying it cannot find the boot partition.  If i go to the machine and reboot it, Win7 comes right up.  If I run the clone and config as 2 seperate tasks, it works fine and the config task reboots the machine.  Is there a fix to this?  I restore between 30 and 50 machines at a time and this is really holding me back from being able to do much in the migration to Win7

Have you tried with MDT 2010, as this is designed by Microsoft to facilitate Windows 7 deployments, and is free to download.
As you may have spotted in an earlier posting in this thread, Symantec have stated that GSS 2.5 is not compatible with Windows 7, and although there are users who have got some aspects working, the bottom line is that you will not get any support from Symantec for Win 7 issues because of this lack of compatibility.

I havent used this, since we have so much time and experience using GSS.  I wanted to be able to keep using what we use now so we wouldn't have to train people to use a new product.

www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/ghost-solution-suite-251-beta-available

The 2.5.1 beta that was in December included support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

I'm showing an update for Live Update - 2.5.1

Does this mean windows 7 support is now available???

I just checked this morning before posting to see if it was released.
They must have just released it today!

Windows 7 support is now available. Just tried a test image last night - works great except I have to figure out how to disable the 'create user' screen in win7 sysprep...

I'm excited!

you can make users in the sysprep XML file under step 7 (OOBE System) Sheel -Setup UserAccounts.  Just make an account here and it shouldnt ask you for one during setup

For those interested in using the Microsoft Deployment Tools, there is online Microsoft MDT training available from Binary Research.  It's session #3 of the various sessions offered.

HTH