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I don't know too much about unattended installs, but I was reading about them earlier and looking for info regarding Win98. I came across this discussion: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=85...amp;cid=7460367 If you go to the 2nd to last post by 'Merlinium' he posts a link to a .zip file of a floppy image of the Win98 version of Sysprep. http://www.damitclan.com/yabb/index.php?bo...y;threadid=3044 I don't know if that floppy image is useful or not, but figured I'd post about it and let those who know more about it than I do decide.

Thanks for the quick reply. I'd like to get a DVD burner too but I didn't want to clutter an already long post with that, but thanks for the link. As I said, I don't know much about Intel CPUs so please explain why you selected that one. Also, is their Socket 775 likely to be around down the road a bit yet or is it already being phased out in favor of something else?

First, my personal definition of "budget" basically means the CPU should cost $100 or less, and the video card (if needed) should cost $50 or less. I'm not a gamer so I don't need blazing cutting edge video, but I'm still looking for good overall bang for the buck and quality hardware. I'll spend a little more here and there if I have to, but I don't want or need to spend $500+ each on a CPU & video card. As a point of reference (and maybe for a good laugh), my current system is a socket-A Athlon Thunderbird 1000 MHz with 512 MB RAM, overclocked to a whopping 1035 MHz. It was originally on an ECS K7S5A, but that board started acting up and a few months ago I replaced it with a recertified PC Chips board from Newegg for $17. At that price I figured I'd take a chance since I didn't want to dump much money into it. So far so good, but I want a new system. For another good laugh, I've just gotten familiar with XP in the last 6 weeks or so. Haven't even activated it yet since I don't have the hardware for this upcoming system. My customized minimal Win98 install has served me well for years, but there are 2-3 programs I want to use that won't run on 98, and I want to use larger HDDs and go SATA and don't want to deal with 98's HDD size limitation, so I finally felt it was time to give XP a shot. This is just going to be a 'general duty' PC. The most demanding thing I use my rig for is music editing, with files seldom larger than 100 MB. Mostly what I want advice on is which CPU & motherboard to get because I can't make up my mind after doing plenty of reading the last couple months. I'll either be running XP by itself or in a dual-boot with Win98, can't make up my mind there yet either. I'm leaning towards an AMD Athlon 64 (not X2 or FX) because the last system I built was AMD based and I'm just more familiar with AMD CPUs. Initial research during the summer led me to a socket 754 system, but after more investigation it seemed pointless to go that route so I turned my attention to a socket 939 system because I thought it would be cheaper than a socket AM2 system with more expensive DDR2 RAM. Fast forward to the present, and DDR2 is pretty much the same price as regular DDR.... so is there any reason whatsoever to consider a 939 system over an AM2? I know AM2 doesn't offer any significant performance advantages, but it is AMD's current socket design that supposedly will be compatible with their next generation CPU. I've considered an Intel system using an Intel chipset on the motherboard because I thought I read on this forum that Intel chipsets were more stable/forgiving with a legacy OS like Win9x, so I thought that might be the way to go if I dual-boot with Win98.... but after doing more reading it seems there are/were some major heat issues with the P4 Prescott CPU, which I *think* is the Intel equivalent to my Athlon choice. I'm not anti-Intel, I'm just not as familiar with their CPUs and don't know what the equivalent versions of Intels are compared to AMD, so feel free to chime in in that regard and suggest a CPU if you think it's a better choice than the Athlon I currently have in mind (AM2 Athlon 64 Orleans core, $90 or less at Newegg). I'd like to use two SATA 3.0 HDDs for XP and archive material, but I haven't fully researched if there are any issues with SATA and Win98, so since I have a few decent PATA HDDs already I guess I can use one of them for Win98 if I go the dual-boot route? For a motherboard, I guess I should try to get one with at least two SATA 3.0 connectors, preferably 4. A big source of confusion for me is the chipsets used on motherboards. I don't know what I should be looking for or what to stay away from, why someone chooses a VIA over nVidia, or vice-versa. I guess it's kind of nice to be able to read through the reviews on Newegg, but a lot of them look like they were written by imbeciles, and there's no way to contact the people to ask them any questions so I take much of what I read there with a grain of salt. Final question for now is LAN speed. I used to see just the 10/100 Mbps spec on boards, but now I see 10/100/1000. For whom is the '1000' spec important? I mean who can take advantage of a board with that spec? Thanks for any forthcoming replies, looking forward to seeing some opinions.

Andromeda, could you explain exactly what you mean by "wants to load to C:" ? Do you mean the the install routine of programs that defaults to "C:\Program Files\[program name]" in the pop-up box when you install a new program... or do you mean something else? I'm guessing you mean something else since you're given the opportunity to edit the path during the install process (at least with any program I've ever installed).I'm confused because what you say below seems to contadict what you say above... That's what's confusing me, it seems like that's the opposite of what you said at the top. Or do you mean the OS should be on C: but that the Program Files folder can be safely moved elsewhere? Myself, I've never changed the install path of new programs and let it default to C:\Program Files, but I've always wondered about having a separate partition just for the Program Files folder. It would certainly shrink the size of the OS's Ghost Image considerably.My reservation with that partitioning strategy is that wouldn't you have to make an additional image of your D:\Program Files partition too? Wait, not an image, you'd just clone that partition for backup purposes, correct? And you'd only have to clone it that one time (unless you found another program you wanted to install permanently) and then never have to restore it again unless of a HDD failure. Then if you install a program and decide you don't like it, you can uninstall it with the program's own uninstall routine or Windows' Add/Remove Programs which would (or should) remove all of that program's files and folders from the D:\Program Files partition. Then you restore the image of your OS, and the process will be faster because the OS image itself is much smaller since the Program Files folder isn't on it. Does that sound right, and explain why you set your system up the way you have? In fact, if you're going to restore your OS image anyway, would there even be any reason to go through the uninstall process with the program you didn't want? Couldn't you just manually delete that program's folder from your D:\Program Files location, restore your OS Image, and be back to where you were prior to installing the program in the first place? Sorry, I really can ramble, can't I? I changed the subject from OS location to partitioning. I'd still like your thoughts about what I asked in post #4 - what about people who dual or multi-boot? I'm not for or against it, but it seems like plenty of people do it successfully, but you mentioned compatibility problems with the OS somewhere other than C:. Since multi-boot systems can have only one OS on C:, does that mean they're bound for compatibility issues in your opinion?

I don't know if I have themes "disabled," but I use the Classic Desktop and Start Menu. I use "show windows contents while dragging," but other than that I have everything else shut off, like the menu shadow/sliding/fading. I just find all of that stuff annoying. No screen saver either, just "Blank" after however many minutes I have it set to.

It seems the opinions are divided right down the middle here. I'll just keep reading as more replies get posted. I think if the motherboard I decide to get happens to have onboard video I'll just opt for that initially and see how it goes rather than getting an additional card right from the get-go.

Mine doesn't give a date when I use the /ver switch, It just says: Norton Ghost 2003 (build=775, cdrlib=3.1.24) If you meant the date on the executable inside the installation .cab, that date is 8-14-02, 15:03.

Interesting, thanks.

I thought I read that Ghost 2003 was also known as v8 (or was it v7?), but your build# is too high (and dated December 2005?).... or are you using an Enterprise or Corporate edition? I heard that build 793 was the final build for the 2003 executable. I have build 775 (cdrlib=3.1.24), and I'm trying to find someone with the latest build since I can't get it through Live Update anymore.

Andromeda, pretty much everything you described about what I should do is what I've already been doing for several years with Win9x except for the burn to DVD. I'm planning on getting a DVD burner when I put this next system together. I do have one Q about something you you said, however... What about people who dual or multi-boot? They have more than one OS on the system and can only have one of them on C:.

Ok, so they're not just for video. Gotcha.

I'm still new to XP believe it or not, only been messing around with it since October. Haven't activated it yet either since I don't yet have the new hardware for the system I'll put it on. At the moment I'm just dual booting 98 & XP on 2 HDDs. Been reading that many people believe XP is very unsecure, and since apparently many viruses and hackers target the C: drive, one simple way to steer clear of that is to simply install XP on a different drive. I'd like to know how to do that, and/or if it's worth it to do that. During the XP install when you get to the screen where you decide where you want to install it, you have the option to make & delete partitions. If you want to create one, I believe it says the minimum size is 8 MB? Is that how people install it on a drive other than C:, by creating a tiny 8 MB primary partition and installing the boot files there, C:, and then installing XP itself on a logical partition, D: ?

Unrelated question but I didn't want to start a whole new thread for it... I've been looking at motherboards and some of them have 3 PCI Express slots on them. Under what circumstances would someone want to use 3 video cards?

Why is that? Onboard video won't be the reason I choose whatever motherboard I eventually choose, but if the one I get does have it I guess I can try it out and see what it's like before getting a separate card.

I actually just started using XP for the first time about a month ago, so Vista is WAY off in the future for me.

If there are any Ghost 2003 users out there I would appreciate it if you would open a DOS prompt in whatever folder you have the ghost.exe stored and type: Ghost /ver and report what build of the executable you have. Thanks.

I've never used a PC with onboard video before and was wondering how good/bad it is for a non-game system? I'm trying to put together a budget AMD AM2 motherboard system and notice that many of the boards have onboard video. If I was to buy a video card it would be a basic $35-45 PCIe x16 card. Is onboard video as "good" as a basic card like that? If so, are there certain video chipsets to look for or steer clear of?

I meant I've only used it to make images of partitions, I've never done a direct disk > disk or partition > partition copy.

I have Ghost already, although I've never messed around with the clone part of the program. I'd probably just use xxcopy.

It's just for storage. Thanks LLXX.

I have a 120 GB HDD with over 100 GB of data on it. I know it's not a good practice to do that, but at the time I had no choice but to move the last 30 GB or so of files onto the drive. Those last 30 GB are rather fragmented, and with the drive as full as it is it would be pointless to try to defrag it, so I wanted to know what the best way would be to move the disk's entire contents to an empty 320 GB drive. Move it all at once and then defrag the new drive after everything is moved? Move 10+ GB over at a time, defrag the new HDD, then repeat? Move 50% over to the new HDD, defrag both drives, then move the remaining now-defragged files over from the smaller HDD? Or what? FYI, almost all of the files are lossless audio files with an average size around 25-30 MB. Thanks.

Thanks, that was news to me and something I had no idea about. I think I know much more about computers and computing than the average person, but I still don't know very much, lol.

Andromeda, in your sample autoexec.bat file you have Ghost.exe following Mouse.exe. The boot floppy the Boot Wizard makes always creates a separate Ghost directory with the executable in it, thereby requiring the line 'CD Ghost' in the autoexec.bat. What's the purpose of doing it that way as opposed to having everything all in the same place? Another question: Instead of having the Ghost executable on the floppy, is there any reason why you shouldn't run it from the hard drive itself after booting from the floppy? Just as an example, say your hard drive has 2 partitions, C: for the OS and programs, and D: for backup, ghost images, data, whatever. You could have a Ghost directory on the D: drive with the executable in it, and then have the autoexec.bat look something like this: @echo off MOUSE.COM D: CD GHOST GHOST.EXE Is there any reason not to do it that way? The executable sure loads a lot faster running it off the hard drive.

I finally got it working for the most part. My mistake was extracting the 2003 ghost.exe file from the .CAB file (called F2506_ghost.exe) and then renaming it to just plain 'ghost.exe' and trying to use it. Doing that was apparently the reason I got the "this copy of Ghost was unable to register" message. When I actually installed the program to my hard drive and then copied the ghost.exe to a bootable floppy it worked fine. Still have one issue though. If I use the Boot Wizard to make a bootable floppy, it'll make one using the PC-DOS that comes with the program (and that floppy works fine), but I can't get it to make one with the MS-DOS system files, and I don't understand what I need to do to get that to work. It says to insert a Win95 or 98 system-formatted floppy. I do that (I think?) but then get a message that the MSDOS system files could not be found on the disk. Which files is it looking for? I've used a formatted floppy with just command.com, io.sys, and msdos.sys on it, and I've also tried using a start-up disk made by Win98, but regardless of which I one use I get the same error message. What's the solution?

Martin, thanks so much for changing that, much appreciated. Xper - sorry, I don't understand the connection between your issue and the one I brought up.