I had the same error on an XP Pro PC. After reading the preceeding posts I thought I was in real trouble. However, I was "successful" in removing GoBack by following the instructions under "To force GoBack to be removed from the master boot record" on the following web page:

http://tinyurl.com/7haby

Maybe I was just lucky. Someone once said "I rather be lucky than good". I think I understand that now.

Good luck!

This may help....albeit temporarly.I have the same problem,with XP not booting....it hangs at the black screen,and goes into a reboot loop.I've had this problem for a couple of years,and have just adapted this formula as a standard routine for bootup.I'm not a tech......I just know this works for me.Here's how I got around this.(for note book users,you'll have to figure out how to apply this go around for a notebook).
When you shut off the comp,reach in back and turn the power switch off,for 15 secs or so,turn the power switch back on and then hit the power in front and see if it boots as normal......I've found that I have to always turn the power off in back after a shutdown......then back on again ofcoarse before my next power-up,If I fail to do this,the comp hangs at the black screen,with the little cursor at the top blinking.This turning the power off in back (same as unpluging)has something to do with resetting something........I told ya I'm not a tech.

tjf - you ROCK!!

i just had this *&%$# loop and was able to force the removal of GoBack by pressing alt-ctl-G. it removed itself from my MBR & BPB.

thank you all so much for this discussion!

Tried GoBack with Win98 SE & when tried to reboot, computer simply froze. Somehow got it going again (don't ask how) and even managed to unload GoBack.
I regard the whole experience as an an indictment of Norton/Symantic. How can a so-called reputable company fail to warn customers that their software is so 'wonky' with a number of OSs.
Don't let this product anywhere near you.

I'm having the same problem as Keith (Reply #7). Has anyone found a solution? The ctrl alt G thing didn't work for me... It's an hp pavilion zt3000 laptop. If you could write my gmail account (jlfraz) if you have an answer, I'll be forever indebted to you.

Thanks. Peace,
James

I'm not a ranter, but I am really wondering about the quality of Symantec Programs lately. Since this thread focusses on GoBack I'll pass on my experience with it. A recent customer with a brand new HP NX6125 laptop purchased Systemworks 2006, and after installing it rebooted, blank screen with cursor flashing at top. I figured it was a problem with the master boot record and so used fixboot, and then fixmbr off the XP Startup disk. Do not do this, she didn't have much or anything to worry about data wise but it garbled the hard drive. So I re-install everything, updates etc. and then try Systemworks again. Same thing. Chatted with Systemworks, they're clueless. Searched their site (which I should have done first of course) and found this link :
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/goback.nsf/5bc7336462b550ae85256ecb0053ce9a/72e537ebdc4a670888256d19004be7b3?OpenDocument&src=bar_sch_nam&seg=ag
If the link doesn't work just search Symantec for gb_prog and you'll get a good list of problems to fix. Once you've built the boot disk (which by the way is getting more difficult with many computers not coming with the floppy...) it's a fairly simple fix and would have saved me a ton of time. My question really is, why is anybody using this GoBack program, as in is it really better than System Restore, and secondly who is responsible for the tech's time. It is totally Symantec's problem, my customer did nothing wrong (except perhaps trust that Symantec produced quality software) yet I wasted a day at least fooling with this problem, and will probably just smile and say don't worry about, no problem, have a nice day. Oh well, so it goes,
D.

Thank you hamx15, you may not be a "tech" but, when nothing else worked, your simple suggestion worked like a miracle! I could not get past the goback bootup problem. I disabled goback, still got the blue screen. Then, as you suggested, I shutdown, unplugged the power from the back of the computer for 30 seconds, pluged it back in, powered up the computer and... my computer booted normally! I then immediately uninstalled goback 3 completely. Everything seems to be fine now. Thank you "very" much!

TZ

Thanks to all on this thread. I found that goback had been installed in my server RAID-5, and, as goback doesn't support RAID arrays, it hung on boot with no escape. The automated replies from Symantec were useless; the "chat" was with a AI system which did NOT pass the Turing test. None of these "intelligent" systems "knew" about the reference you gave. The next boot, I hit Ctrl-Alt-G, and replied "F", and goodbye goback! I am impressed that Symantec markets a program which installs on a system which they KNOW won't support it. Of course, I then uninstalled goback from the "add-remove programs" box. Again, thanks to all - it was a life-saver. /robertknapp@gnomon.us/

Bought a new high-end Gateway media center with all the bells & whistles recently. Been running GoBack for years on various clones and self-builts under 98 SE and it saved me countless times. Bought a Dell 700m laptop last year. Sweet machine running XP Pro w/SP2, and wanted to keep it running; installed GoBack 3.0 without problem and am still using it. My new Gateway 835 GM desktop choked on it! It booted, got the GoBack logo/splash with the "spacebar" option and then....black screen with "mbr error." Couldn't go any further. Rebooted - same thing! Next time around disabled GoBack from the spacebar prompt and machine booted okay into XP. Uninstalled GoBack, then tried re-installing it again. Similar problem except this time I couldn't get the GoBack spacebar prompt. Tried numerous restarts and eventually the system offered me a choice of restarting from my "last known good configuartion." Desparate, I took it and it booted into XP. I uninstalled GoBack and started searching at Symantec and everywhere else I could find a reference concerning this problem. Answers found so far? None. This site has at least had more recognition of the problem than any other I have checked. Thank you for all of the information. For now I plan to rely on system restore setup built into XP, but the idea of "relying" on a Microsoft product is rather uncomfortable to me. Even worse, GoBack used to save all of my lost work/data. Windows system restore doesn't guarantee that your work will be restored. It's sad that a good product has come to this. Unfortunately, I must agree with the statements concerning the poor quality of Symantec's customer support I have found on this site and others. This is not the first Norton-named product I've had trouble with and got no help from them. I don't buy their software any more and won't until they stop this kind of service and response and make their products dependable and safe to use again.

...One prog that fixes many of the Roxio Goback proprietary partition problems is DiskPatch! Runs from floppy, restores "primary dos partitions".