I have purchased a new PC and want to clean up my old PIII for my son to take to college. It has alot of obsolete files and programs on it. I was wondeing about Symantec Ghost. Can you tell it what files and programs to copy? I know it overwrites the hard drive as it reimages, I have used Ghost at work, but only with CD's someone else created, so I don't know all the options you have. Or, would it be best to format the hard drive and just start fresh? I do have all the CD's for the drivers and OS. If I did this, would the boot disk created through the add/remove program be enough to use to get to the OS on the CD or should I add autoexec.bat and config.sys files? (read that at another website). Also, where do you tell it to format the hard drive? And if anyone knows of informative websites, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Kat

Kat, Ghost isn't going to be a option at first. You'll have to format the drive and reinstall Windows, drivers and all other needed programs first. When everything is the way it should be after your fresh installation, then you can you use Ghost to make a image of the whole thing. When using Ghost 7 or higher you can even burn the image directly to CD, that is if there is a burner in the system. As for the bootdisk, I think it should be enough, but better to be safe than sorry: Boot the system with the created bootdisk and see if you can access the CD-ROM drive. You'll have to pay good attention to see what drive letter is assigned to the CD-ROM drive. It can be D: or E: or even R: And for the format thing, you'll have to check and see if the bootdisk contains a file called format.com. If not you can find it in the Windows\Command folder copy it to the bootdisk. If and only IF both of the above can be confirmed, you're read to rock and roll! and proceed with the below stated instructions. When you have booted from the bootdisk, you'll be in the DOS prompt and it looks like this: A:>_ from there you type in: format c: /s>[Enter]key y[Enter]key When this nearly done it's going to ask for a volume name, you can leave this blank or enter anything you like as long as it doesn't exeed 11 characters followed by the [Enter]key. Change to your CD-ROM drive by typing the appropiate drive letter (See above) followed by the [Enter]key From there type in: Setup[Enter]key and your off, just follow the instructions on your screen from there. And for your last question: Howtos on the left site of this forum. Keep us posted. Greetz from The Netherlands, The Count (January 4th, 02:35 hours) N.B. When you're good and ready to use Ghost, let us know for further instructions.

ya said a mouthfull. norton ghost is a simple 1 and a half MB dos program. It copies an entire partition or drive and puts it to another partition or drive. you cannot choose which files you will make a ghost image of and which you wont. its all or nothing. partion by partition. ghost does not copy the blank space of your HD or partition, so its smaller than the partition sarts as, and you can accually compress it. i have compressed 4 gig to about 1.5G. i love ghost. i can go from format to totally reinstalled with every program and update in place in 15 minutes. im not real clear what your ghosting. but...if your thinking a putting a image on from another pc...this will be a bit more difficult than you think, because the drives and all recognize a different hardware configuartion. as far as formatting.....fdisk. you need to have a boot disk for the OS your installing. It will have the tools you need to format your drive. as far as websites go. just do a google on fdisk or intalling windows or symantec ghost. or..... http://radified.com/index2.html theres a good tutorial on FDISK and GHOST

For a thorough, plain English guide, try this site: Starting Over: Repartitioning, Reformatting and Reinstalling HTH Dave

Before formatting, you might want to go to Mesich.com & download WinDrive Expert. You can run this program to locate & copy all of your existing drivers into a folder, where they can be burned to a CD for reinstallation later. HTH Dave

"Or, would it be best to format the hard drive and just start fresh?" If you have a set of OEM recovery disks for the PC your sons taking to college.. Back your data up and do just that. The recovery disks usually have neccesary drivers included. If you have windows disks follow the links in Dave357's posts #3 and #4. I assume you have another PC for you? If so just copy the data [your data] to the new pc. At work.. they use ghost to reimage many pc's to save time. Since your only dealing with one pc and you have the recovery disks or a real windows disk you dont need ghost.

Thanks for everyone's help and input! I don't have a recovery CD with my old system, just a Windows 98 OS plus all the original disks for drivers and programs. I will be checking out the websites everyone posted. I just happened across Computing.net last night, it seems like a great place for info~ Thanks again! Kat