I downloaded Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable (v2) From Microsoft's Download Center and installed it, but I got the same results when I tried to reinstall Symantec Ghost 7.5.

Microsoft's article, "Error 1719: The Windows Installer service could not be accessed" error message when you try to add or remove a program states the behavior may occur if the following conditions are true:

• The Windows Installer files that are on your hard disk are damaged or are missing.
• You install or remove a program that uses the Windows Installer Microsoft Software Installation (MSI) package file (.msi). For example, this may occur when you try to install Microsoft Office on your computer.

I was starting the Symantec Gost 7.5 installation process from a CD with an autorun file, but I noticed there was a file, Symantec Ghost.msi in an Install directory on the CD. The installation process likely uses the .msi file for the installation.

Microsoft's article recommends steps to resolve the problem. You should first determine the location of the file msiexec.exe on your system. The file will be in the Windows system32 directory, which is usually either C:\Windows\system32 or C:\WINNT\system32 for versions of Windows after Windows 98. For Windows 98 the file is usually in C:\Windows\System. You can search for the file or you can determine the Windows directory by obtaining a command prompt and checking the value of the %WINDIR% environment variable with echo %WINDIR%, which will tell you which directory is the Windows directory on a system. You can then verify that msiexec.exe is in that directory.

C:\>dir %WINDIR%\system32\msiexec.exe
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is E88C-7773

 Directory of C:\Windows\system32

03/21/2005  02:00 PM            78,848 msiexec.exe
               1 File(s)         78,848 bytes

You then need to check the registry to make sure that HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSIServer\ImagePath has a value that corresponds to the actual location of the msiexec.exe file on the system. You can do so using the regedit command or using a reg query command from a command prompt.

C:\>reg query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSIServer

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSIServer
    Description    REG_SZ    Adds, modifies, and removes applications provided a
s a Windows Installer (*.msi) package. If this service is disabled, any services
 that explicitly depend on it will fail to start.
    Type    REG_DWORD    0x20
    Start    REG_DWORD    0x3
    ErrorControl    REG_DWORD    0x1
    ImagePath    REG_EXPAND_SZ    C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe /V
    DisplayName    REG_SZ    Windows Installer
    DependOnService    REG_MULTI_SZ    RpcSs
    DependOnGroup    REG_MULTI_SZ
    ObjectName    REG_SZ    LocalSystem

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSIServer\Security
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSIServer\Enum

If the msiexec.exe file is in C:\Windows\System32, you should see C:\Windows\System32\Msiexec.exe /V as the value in the key. In the case of the system I was working on, the file location matched the registry value.

If the values don't match, you will need to enter the correct path in the registry or put the file in the directory listed in the registry. Once the values match, you will need to reregister the msiexec.exe file. To do so, restart the computer in Safe Mode (hit F8 to get the menu of boot options before Windows starts when you reboot).

Once you've logged into an administrator account on the system in Safe Mode, you will need to use the following procedure:

Click Start, click Run, type the following line, and then click OK:

msiexec /regserver

Note: For 64-bit operating systems, you also need to reregister the 64-bit MSI installer. To do this, click Start, click Run, type the following line, and then click OK:

Drive:\Windows\Syswow64\Msiexec /regserver

On 64-bit editions of a Windows operating system, 32-bit binaries are located in %systemroot%\SysWow64 folder. 64-bit binaries are located in the %systemroot%\System32 folder.

Once you have reregistered the msiexec.exe file, you will need to reboot into standard mode. Then try the installation process again that failed previously. If that fails, Microsoft does offer another alternative for dealing with the problem. See "Method 2" at "Error 1719: The Windows Installer service could not be accessed" error message when you try to add or remove a program.

In my case, I was then able to successfully reinstall Symantec Ghost 7.5 on the system, though I did receive another error at the end of the process that was not associated with the previous installer problem. The error I received at the end is shown below.

References:

1. Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable (v2)
   Date Published: September 2, 2005
   Microsoft Download Center
2. "Error 1719: The Windows Installer service could not be accessed" error message when you try to add or remove a program
   Article ID : 315346
   Last Review : March 1, 2007
   Microsoft Help and Support
3. File Extension Details for .MSI
   FileExt

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MS-DOS LAN Manager v2.1 Netbind
IBM Netbind Version 2.1
Microsoft (R) Mouse Driver Version 8.20
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. 1983-1992.
Copyright (C) IBM Corp. 1992-1993.
Mouse driver installed
Network initialization failed: the DOS-mode client cannot proceed
Unable to obtain IP address via DHCP
Network initialization failed: the DOS-mode client cannot proceed
Unable to obtain IP address via DHCP

The last two lines continued to repeat. I hit Ctrl-C to break out of the loop, which yielded a C:\GHOST> prompt. I realized then that the Ghost backup process that normally runs on the weekend encountered a problem. A Ghost 7.5 server normally starts a backup of the system on the weekend by contacting the Ghost client software on the system and instructing it to reboot into a Ghost virtual partition. When the backup process completes, the system will reboot into Windows. But, in this case, something went wrong.

Apparently, when the system rebooted into the Ghost virtual partition, it couldn't obtain an IP address from the Ghost server via DHCP and then just continually looped as it tried to obtain an IP address via DHCP. When I later checked the DHCP server, I found that it had exhausted its pool of available IP addresses for handing out via DHCP.

At the prompt, I typed ngctdos -hide and hit Enter to "hide" the Ghost virtual boot partition and restart the system normally.

References:

1. System Stuck in Ghost Virtual Boot Partition
   MoonPoint Support

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Read sector failure, result=1, drive=1,sectors 729050177 to
729050178
If this problem persists, contact Symantec Technical Support
at http://service.symantec.com

I put the drive in a desktop system and booted that system from one of the Ghost 2003 CDs I had tried with the laptop. I didn't receive any error messages and was able to back up the drive without any problems, so I'm not sure why I received the error message when attempting the backup with the laptop.

I know that sometimes a CD or DVD drive will have problems with discs from a particular manufacturer, so perhaps the external HP DVD ROM drive (p/n: PA509A#ABA) was having a problem reading the Office Depot CD-R discs I had put Ghost on, but that shouldn't have any bearing on Ghost aborting when I tried to start it to backup the disk drive. I was able to boot the laptop using the external DVD-ROM drive with an Ubuntu Linux LiveCD.

Ghost Backup

Drive	Size (MB)	Type	Cylinders	Heads	Sectors
    1	    76319	Basic	    20023	  255	     63


					Volume	Size	Data Size
Part	Type	ID	Description	Label	in MB	in MB
   1	Primary 07	       NTFS	No name	76316	    41270
					Free	    2
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                        Total	76319	    41270

Speed (MB/min):
369
MB copied:
38730
Time elapsed:
1:44:56

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Write protect error writing drive A
Abort, Retry, Fail?

I would hit F and the boot process would proceed. If I hit R, I would get the same message again. Hitting A for "Abort" would allow me to proceed to running Ghost, but the mouse driver wouldn't load. If I hit F8 just as I was booting from the Ghost 2003 boot CD, I could walk through the commands in config.sys and autoexec.bat, which allowed me to see that the error occurred just as the mouse driver was being loaded.

I didn't know how to eliminate the error until I found the cause of the problem described by eASYkILL in a posting at Ghost 2003 Multi-Boot CD (Abort,Retry,Fail) error. He posted the following information:

So here is the deal... MOUSE.COM is trying to create a MOUSE.INI file and because you created a bootable CD (read-only) it is unable to write the file and gives the error message (Abort, Retry, Fail). If you fail, you can continue just fine with mouse support.

The solution... add a MOUSE.INI to your floppy that you are creating the image from. If you booted from the floppy at least once, this problem doesn't occur because the file is created. That may be how it went away for you. Just re-create the bootable CD from the floppy with mouse.ini added.

Here is my mouse.ini

[mouse]
MouseType=PS2

Cheers!

Since most of the systems on which I'm performing the Ghost 2003 image backups have a mouse attached by the PS/2 mouse port, I thought that should work fine. So I used Notepad to create a mouse.ini file with the above lines on one of the Ghost 2003 boot floppy disks (be sure to change the "save as type" to "all files", if using the Windows Notepad program). I also found that I was able to boot laptops with a built-in mouse touchpad and use use the mouse with no problems with the mouse type set to PS2 in mouse.ini. I no longer received the "Abort, retry, or fail" message when booting from a Ghost 2003 boot CD that had the mouse.ini file in the root directory.

Note: you can see optons for the mouse.com program by typing mouse /? at a command prompt. You can use mouse off to remove the mouse driver from memory.

mouse type       /Cn (serial), /Z (PS2), /In (inPort), /B (bus)
                  (n specifies a prot and can be either 1 or 2)

References:

1. Procedure for Generating Norton Ghost Bootable CD
   MoonPoint Support
2. Ghost 2003 Multi-Boot CD (Abort,Retry,Fail) error
   By: eASYkILL
   Date: April 1, 2005
   Microsoft Software Forum Network (MSFN)

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I saw that the initialization failed.

The event details showed that the client timed out.

A Ghost client system should be listening on UDP port 1346. The Ghost server sends a datagram from UDP port 1347 to port 1346 on the client to start the backup. But when I scanned the client system with Foundstone's free ScanLine program, I found it wasn't responding on port 1346.

C:\>sl -u 1346 192.168.0.14
ScanLine (TM) 1.01
Copyright (c) Foundstone, Inc. 2002
http://www.foundstone.com

Scan of 1 IP started at Sat Jul 12 13:29:59 2008

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
192.168.0.14
Responded in 0 ms.
0 hops away
Responds with ICMP unreachable: Yes

UDP ports:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scan finished at Sat Jul 12 13:29:59 2008

1 IP and 1 port scanned in 0 hours 0 mins 0.02 secs

And when I examined the network traffic between the two systems with MicroOLAP's tcpdump when I ran the backup task, I saw the client system was returning a "udp port 1346 unreachable" message.

I logged onto the system from the server using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). When I logged on and checked whether the system was listening on UDP port 1346 with netstat, I saw it was listening.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>netstat -a | find "1346"
  UDP    Ellie:1346             *:*

When I disconnected and scanned the system from the Ghost server again using ScanLine, I could then see it was responding on UDP port 1346. Apparently just logging on to the system caused it to start accepting data on port 1346 again.

C:\Program Files\Network\Scanning\Scanline>sl -u 1346 192.168.0.14
ScanLine (TM) 1.01
Copyright (c) Foundstone, Inc. 2002
http://www.foundstone.com

Scan of 1 IP started at Sat Jul 12 14:09:32 2008

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
192.168.0.14
Responded in 0 ms.
0 hops away
Responds with ICMP unreachable: Yes

UDP ports: 1346

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scan finished at Sat Jul 12 14:09:36 2008

1 IP and 1 port scanned in 0 hours 0 mins 4.02 secs

But when I ran the Ghost task again, it again failed. And when I scanned the system with ScanLine again, I found the client system was no longer responding on port 1346. And when I checked from the system itself by using the netstat command again, I found netstat was no longer showing it listening on port 1346.

From the client system itself, I ran ngctw32.exe, which is located in C:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost. When I ran ngctw32, the ScanLine program showed it listening on port 1346 as did netstat. I then reran the Ghost task from the server. This time the backup started.

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1. On the View menu, click Scheduler. All scheduled tasks will appear.
2. On the Task menu, click New Task.
3. Expand the Tasks folder.
4. Select the task that you want to schedule, then click on the OK button.
5. On the Schedule tab, set the date, time, and frequency with which to execute the task.

   

6. On the Task tab, in the Run as field, type the user name of the person who is running the task. The default is the logged on user.
7. Click on the Set Password button.
8. In the Password field, type your password. You must type a password to run the task. The password is confirmed when the task runs.
9. In the Confirm field, type your password again to confirm that it is entered correctly.
10. Click on the OK button.

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When I checked the Ghost services (click on Start, select Run, type services.msc and hit Enter), I found the Symantec Ghost COnfiguration Server was started, but not the Symantec Ghost Database Service, which had a manual startup type. I double-clicked on Symantec Ghost Database Service and clicked on the Start button to start it. I received the error message below:

Services
	Could not start the Symantec Ghost Database Service service on Local Computer. Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified. OK

The "path to executable" value was C:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost\bin\dbserv.exe. When I checked, I found there was no C:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost directory. I believe it wasn't recovered when a disk drive problem occurred previously. To correct the problem, I reinstalled Symantec Ghost. I chose the Repair option during the installation. At the end of the repair operation, I saw the error message below:

Symantec Ghost Configuration Server
	08001 [Sybase][ODBC Driver][Adaptive Server Anywhere]Unable to connect to database server: Database server not running Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified. OK

So I tried the Remove option to "Remove Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition from your computer". After deinstalling the software, I reinstalled it. The Symantec Ghost Console then started without a problem. And when I checked the running services, I saw that both Symantec Ghost Configuration Server and Symantec Ghost Database Service were started.

I didn't see the client systems in the default machine group, so thought I had to add the client systems back into the console. When I tried to reinstall the client software on a system, the installation failed. When I checked the RemoteInstall.log, I saw the reason listed as "Remotely Installed Client is installed on this machine."

To resolve the problem I restored the privkey.crt, pubkey.crt, and C:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost directory from a Ghost backup I had from some time ago.

To backup those files and that directory or restore over them, you should close the Ghost Console, if you have it open, and stop the running Ghost services. You can stop the Ghost services by clicking on Start, then selecting Run and typing the following command and hitting Enter. You need to include the double quotes where shown below.

"c:\program files\symantec\ghost\ngserver.exe" -stop

If you check the running services, you should then see both Symantec Ghost Configuration Server and Symantec Ghost Database Service are stopped.

I then restored the privkey.crt, pubkey.crt, and C:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost directory from the backup. Afterwards, I ran the command "c:\program files\symantec\ghost\ngserver.exe" -start to restart the Symantec Ghost services. I then saw the systems in the default machine group I had been using previously for the Ghost backups.

References:

1. How to move the Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.x Console to a different computer or retain Console settings during a reinstall
   Document ID: 2001050812540225
   Last Modified: 11/08/2007
   Date Created: 05/08/2001
   Operating System(s): DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows ME
   Product(s): Symantec Ghost 7.0, Symantec Ghost 7.5, Symantec Ghost 8.0, Symantec Ghost 8.2, Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.0, Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.1
   Release(s): Ghost 7.0 [All Releases], Ghost 7.5 [All Releases], Ghost 8.0 [All Releases], Symantec Ghost 8.2 [All Releases], Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.0 [All Releases], Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.1
   Symantec Corporation

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I tried another Norton Ghost 2003 boot diskette, but had the same results.

I then tried a PartImage Is Not Ghost (PING) boot CD. During the boot process I saw the following:

ata1: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0x80)
ata1: softreset failed (device not ready)

PING dropped me to a shell prompt, since that was the option I picked for when it completed, without giving me a chance to start the backup. I powered the system off and on and rebooted. I did not see the messages noted above then and I was able to backup the system to an external USB disk drive.

I then tried again with a Norton Ghost 2003. This time Norton Ghost saw the drive, but when I attempted to backup the drive, I received the error below:

I tried again with a boot diskette that I had created using the Norton Ghost Boot Wizard just a couple of days ago, since the first time I used a boot CD that I had created a couple of years ago. The results were the same, however.

The next night I backed up the system with PING again and, afterwards, tried a Norton Ghost 2003 boot disc with the USB 1.1 drivers provided by Symantec with Ghost 2003.

This time I saw the error message "File Name ? (546)". When I clicked on OK, I saw the message below:

When I was dropped to a command prompt, though, I saw the following:

ABORT: 29089, Write to image file failed

ABORT: 36000, A GeneralException occurred

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When I hit enter for "OK", I then received the following error message:

Internal Error 36000

An internal inconsistency has been detected
If this problem persists, contact Symantec Technical Support
at http://service.symantec.com


		[  OK  ]

When I hit enter, I saw the following:

ABORT: 12020, Write to CD/DVD disc failed

ABORT: 36000, A generalException occurred

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