BillyG.

speaking of Ghost... I had a chance to try a system recovery with my full image file from last night and (drum roll please!!) IT WORKED GREAT. I went thru System Recovery (F10 at bootup) with the Ghost CD in the drive and followed the directions. One weird thing though, it had my backup external HD as D:\ (which is really my OEM HD second partition), not F:\ (which is my new external Ghost 9.0 image backup HD) like it should have been. It was kinda hokey but it did work once I realized how to point the Ghost software to the image file that I wanted it to use. Been going strong for 3 hours (with a reboot immediately after the image restore). G/L.

I would have much rather preferred the option for differential backups vs incremental but that's all they offered so... Because of this, by time the third night of backups was completed, I was too afraid something like your situation could happen to me so: I opted to make the software perform a FULL backup nightly and the incremental one (it forces you to schedule at least one, weird!) is scheduled an hour after the full one is scheduled (to allow the full to finish first). Then when I get up the next day (or whenever), I just delete the previous FULL backup (and the incremental one that is there once a week) and run a quick defrag on the external HD that this image backup is restored to. None of this solves your problem obviously but it does prevent it from happening to anybody else. FYI: I'm using the latest Ghost, 9.0 (in case there is any difference from scheduling parameters with earlier versions). G/L.

Sorry to hear about your dilemma mugglewump, I too waited quite awhile before trying out SP2 but after 2 weeks of hell (very slow system), I uninstalled it and reverted to SP1. Since then, my system had an unrelated crash (fiddling with deleting TIF folders... here's the answer to that: http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp/index.html try it, you'll love it!...freeware, not shareware) where my only recourse was a recovery (I couldn't even get to the prompt!) which of course set everything back to factory specs. That was about 3 weeks ago. Since then, I have bought an external HD and Norton Ghost so I can make full, rebootable, nightly system image backups. I highly recommend this for everybody because no matter how many restore points or NTBackups you have, if you crash and can't even get to the prompt, these will not help at all. No matter, you can't use them with a prompt anyway! Also, I have attempted to make my own boot disk but you need a copy of the image file which resides on the XP install CD; of course, like most people, my system came preloaded. Luckily, when I bought Ghost, Symantec includes a recovery disk with plenty of boot.ini options. As a side note: can someone tell me if the XP D:\ partition (used for system recoveries but anything else?) & C:\I386 folder are needed since I have a full backup image at my disposal now. I would love to free up the HD disk space these are taking up right now. TIA. Back to the reason I decided to post to this thread: in an effort to shove SP2 down everyone's throat, Bill & Co. have made it next to impossible to find a copy of SP1 to download (unless I was just having a bad day). I finally found a copy (xpsp1a_en_x86) but it is supposed to be for multiple boxes only. Needless to say, I haven't used it yet (thanks to my saved image) but I keep it just in case since it was so hard to find in the first place. Since your first HD came with SP1 (or earlier) originally, I suggest you do a system recovery via F8 during bootup since this should get you back to factory specs. Be warned though, I took me several tries to get it to get past the 2nd or 3rd screen, KEEP TRYING by rebooting into recovery everytime, it fnally went thru (WOW, that was scarey) and now I love my system more than ever before since it gave me a chance to do a full system cleanup and delete things I never used anyway. G/L.

Are you sure that you are not looking at a .bmp file being displayed on your desktop? Change the desktop image, hopefully that is all it is. g/l

Peter, do you know if Ghost 9.0 will perform this same function for me, that is: delete the OEM D:\ partition? I bought Ghost last week and am using it for daily incremental (wish they offered differential) backups to my external HD but I only see references to their utilities in case a recovery is needed IRT partitions (not including deleting one though). Obviously, you would probably only know about this if you had Ghost yourself so I hope to hear from someone that could educate me. Also, I want to delete the OEM D:\ partition because I believe it is ONLY used for recovery functions, is this correct? Since I have a complete external image now, I reckon I can free up some space on my HD, i.e. D:\ has only 700+KB of files but is taking up over 6GB of HD space. TIA. Was just surfing some more, maybe I can use XP's Disk Management to delete D:\ and reinstall my image on top of the new (bigger) C:\. If that is the only option (not having a partition manager), I guess I'll WAIT UNTIL I HAVE TO DO IT since I am nowhere near starved for space right now anyway.

what are you talking about? try posting again, in the right area

System Restore is an XP function which can be reached from the System Restore tab of System from the Control Panel. FYI: delete any old restore points by turning it off here and then you can turn it right back on (if you wish) in case of any virus attacks, etc. That was for PaulyP. Sorry Alec, I haven't had to use the function yet with Ghost and would just assume wait... here's to hoping! lol g/l

I'm on the same page with you Alec IRT Ghost 9.0! I recieved it a few days ago and love it even though I read some bad critiques on it. The only problem I have with it though is the fact that it only does incremental backups, not differential, so you have to keep every backup file (taking up space) in case you need to use it. The other problem is that it only does weekly or monthly full image backups, not daily! (at least according to the menu options, it will do the incrementals daily though if you just checkoff everyday, I suppose I could get it to do the full daily also...) As is, I reckon I will delete all the daily incrementals the day after the new weekly full image is ran. It is a little more laborious but beats the fact that I got screwed with NTBackup a few weeks ago when my system crashed and I had to do a Recovery (all those registry edits lost!) to get back in because I couldn't get to the prompt (which isn't an option for NTBackup or Restore Points anyway!). It was at that point that I broke down and got an external SeaGate on the cheap and now use it for a full bootable (thanks Ghost) backup. Ghost even provides a bootable recovery CD with all applicable options! Creating a bootdisk was the other monster I was messing with because, like most people, my system was preloaded and you need the Windows CD for access to a few files (at least the image file!). I thought the I386 folder was an exact copy of the CD but apparently not. (If someone could educate me on exactly what it is that this folder and the D:\ out the box are used for, I would appreciate it, i.e now that I have an external HD (power source seperate from computer) for complete image backups, is the I386 folder or the D:\ (partition) even needed? TIA) Anyway, Ghost has taken care of all my backup needs for me now. I was so happy to see my new F:\ EXACTLY mirror my C:\, down to the byte. FYI: Ghost was retailing at BestBuy and others for $69 last week, I got it from BUYCHEAPSOFTWARE.com for $55 total... it even comes with a $20 rebate option if upgrading from certain Symantec products (go to Symantec for the downloadable coupon) but you need proof-of-purchase from the product you are upgrading from (keep those software boxes!). Needless to say, the rebate didn't work for me but $55 is still better than $69 (albeit several days later, 3-day ground via Fed-Ex from CA.) G/L.

the GooglePreview extension (FireFox, not IE) accomplishes this task wonderfully it shows a thumbnail view of web pages resulting from of Google, Yahoo, etc. search great for picking a page you went to previously but can't remember the address 'cause you will recognize the picture IE, what's IE? lol g/l

lol, you got me on that one... I meant to type ZA (I have that too!) and that is what I was searching on, momentary brain-fart thx for pushing on the BartPE subject, now I'm curious, g/l

YOU DA MAN APK! Thanks for your input and best wishes! off note: I looked around for awhile IRT your question on Ad-Aware logs (tvdebug, etc.) but wasn't able to find anything useful IRT where they are controlled from, sorry; everything I read said they could just be deleted but that doesn't answer your question. On a bias note, I own Ad-Aware also.

APK, IRT your statement made earlier: "Might as well cut that figure of how occupied C:\ drive is minus the pagefile.sys in 1/2 & add 10mb!" I have a 30GB HD with less than 6GB used right now. I suppose that a full 30GB allocation for a backup HD would suffice well into the future on this current system but I guess I'll judge that based on price (thanks for your formula). Would there be any advantage to having my working pagefile (being used now) reside on the second backup HD (in addition to the backed up pagefile) or should I just leave my current HD as is and use the new HD strictly for a backup source? Thanks for yours and everyone else's help.

Your a great saleman APK! Actually, that wasn't a hard sale at all; as soon as I read your "It is... fast too! Far faster than tapedrives" (which obviously makes sense) and then your "having that second disk for storing my backup image (once I get a "perfect" setup that's virus/malware/worm free & with all my softwares, tweaks + tunings, & shell extensions into place on it)", I knew what I was gonna do! Thanks for the kick in the butt! I really appreciate it.

Thanks for the reply and sticking with me on this one APK. I understand your post and the procedures you are using but I have to ask you to please read the first post this thread; in it, I explained why I am looking for another option, perhaps another drive is the only option! Again, thanks for your patience.

accidental post... why can't I cancel out?