Years ago Norton Ghost was my imaging software until Windows 7 came along. The version I had was no longer compatible. That's when I started using Macrium. I came across an old backup, Norton Ghost image of a Windows XP system. I was going to throw it away, but I wanted to make sure there was nothing of value on it first. I started looking to see if there was some kind of independent viewer online, but found none. So I had to devise an overly complicated scheme to read these files.
Just so happens that I have an old tower named Acer Aspire AST135-U-S3302, originally a Windows XP computer. I just put in an unused hard drive that I had and Iim going to try to restore the Norton Image to this system.
I knew the Norton backups where bootable, so I put in the first DVD (there were 2), and kept clicking the F12 key on my keyboard to get into the boot menu. The DVD booted up, and I clicked OK to get pass the About Norton Ghost screen.
The mouse didn't work, so I used the arrows on my keyboard. I clicked on Local, then Disk and then From Image. I accepted all the prompts after that and got Norton to restore this image to my system. Eventually I had to place in disk 2 and then reboot the system.
I did not expect the system to boot up. A different backup for a different system. I was right. It booted to a BSOD. This is when part two of my plan comes into motion. This involves using a boot CD, Hiren's.
The latest version can be found here, based on a 64-bit version of Windows 10: https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
On that page scroll down to the table were you see Filename HBCD_PE_x64.iso(Special thanks to our.... and click on the words HBCD_PE_x64.iso. Ignore the large START DOWNLOAD options, they are just adds.
I using an older 32bit computer so I stuck with it. I booted up to the boot menu and selected Mini Windows XP.
When the Windows XP desktop got loaded, it was just a matter of using the Windows Explorer to navigate the drive. The computer was not bootable but the file structure was intact, that is what I was counting on.
There was nothing there worth salvaging, so I took the DVDs smashed them to bits and threw them away. It was still worth it.