I have been visiting here for several months now with various problems. I have seen many posts saying their Windows Me is stable once installed properly and tweaked. I have seen many recommendations about partitioning and using Ghost. I have now come to the decision it may be time to dump the OEM install as this seems to be my main problem. Despite doing a full recovery about 9 times so far I still get problems, it would seem that I must have had a bad install in the first place and all I am doing is recovering it. Obviously I am a little cautious, I do not want to lose my system or invalidate my warranty. QUESTIONS 1. I have seen here and elsewhere that it is possible to create an Install CD by burning the Options Cabs to a CD, will this be a "FULL" Install CD? 2. Partitioning, would the following be ok from a 40GB Drive? 5GB - System partion, i.e, windows, swap file etc. 5GB - Recovery Partition. 10GB - Program Partition. 20GB - Storage Partition. Any Helpful advice to a novice about how to do this safely? Thanks Les

A lot of that stuff is just personal preferences. You neednt worry about the swap file as most computers today have enough physical ram so they dont need virtual ram. The recovery partition i dont see the use of. There may be a minute speed gain by placing a program partition. But a storage partition is a must. You need a c: and a d: drive. The cab files will give you a full install. That idea will work fine as long as you either make the cd bootable or have a boot floppy to format the drive then copy the cabs. You wont void your warranty if there is ever an issue put your OEM disk back in and restore it to factory settings. Me is very stable if setup properly. Hope this helps

Jason Thanks for the help, I was just a little worried that as my system was an OEM Configured Install some of the features, hardware databases etc, might be missing in my CABS. I am saying this because as I mentioned in another post, I do not appear to have a Video Drivers Databse, I discovered this while trying to update my graphics drivers. I have to go through a messy procedure to force Standard VGA prior to upgrading. I guess I am going to have to pluck up the courage and give it a try as I have just got a copy of Ghost. Like you said, a friend just told me that my Recovery CD should save me if I screw up. But he suggested Ghosting the system as it stands just incase the recovery does not work. I have never used any of these programs so I am going to spend a little time studying them before I attempt this. Thanks again Les

How much software do you have? I would just install the software on the same partition as windows. When you ghost the drive you get it all. OS and software. Make sure you get everythig just the way you want it. Change settings and download updates etc. before ghosting. What kind of computer do you have? An HP can be recovered with the recovery disks. You might ask around before you waste time ghosting the present system. And if you do wish to ghost the present system i would use the recovery disk now to start fresh then ghost. Atleast your ghost copy will be as close to a clean install as possible :).

http://www.easydesksoftware.com/easyrec.htm saw this posted a little further up,might be what you want. deek

Les, if you think about it please list step by step as best you can what you do to complete this task. The information would be a great resource for others who wish to do the same thing. Ive seen many compaq users ask about this. Thank You

Thanks everyone again. ShutMeUpOrDown, I will post back the results once done, but I am still a little nervous about recking everything. I have gathered all of the software needed, and have download what seems like hundreds of Ghost related tutorials that I am curently studying. Can I ask a question? The initial partition and format, I know the usual way is FDISK and FORMAT. However, Ghost 2002 provides its own tool gdisk.exe that is supposed to replace FDISK and FORMAT. I also have a Maxtor Tool called MAXBLAST.exe that also works like gdisk. Have you used either, are they much easier and better than FDISK and FORMAT? They both have Easy to use, Graphical Interface (GUI) with mouse support so I am guessing they are select point and click type programs. This would be much simpler for me than messing with DOS Commands.