Andromeda43

Any APC UPS you can afford will do the job of giving you enough time to close files and shut down your computer during a power failure. (Even the little 350va unit that sells locally for $39 to $42) It will also kick in to protect you against brownouts or momentary outages. Most have really good power surge protection built in for the AC line and one phone line. You can greatly extend the run-time of any UPS by installing external batteries to provide additional power. These two large car batteries power my APC 650va UPS that backs up my 25" TV and Satellite Box. They kept me going for four days during hurricane Frances, with only one recharge off of my car, with long jumper cables. While my neighbors were in the dark, I still had my TV, a table lamp and a small personal fan. I also used a 12v immersion heater to make coffee. God, I love APC! Good Luck to ya! Me

Ditto! (John, you took the words right out of my mouth ) If there's anything special about Dell ram, it's just that they probably buy the cheapest ram that they can. If you buy a 1 gig stick for instance, put it in the first slot and move the 512 to slot #2. Good Luck, Andromeda43

PowerDVD has come FREE with every boxed DVD player/burner that I've bought for the last year or more. (so does "Nero, Burning Rom" Software) Many people have those CD's, just laying around. I've got a whole stack of them. Finding one shouldn't be all that hard. I too like PowerDVD for a really great DVD player. Nero 7.x also has a pretty good DVD player (media player) Y'all have a great NEW YEAR now, Y'hear? Andromeda43

Happy New Year, Sircooks, I would have to assume that if Microsoft wrote special versions of windows for different countries, it would most likely be because they use different keyboards, symbols, etc. The latin keyboard probably has all those letters with things on top of them and of course the upside down question mark. The UK keyboard would have the English Pound symbol, etc. If you're using a keyboard with American (US) letters on it, you would probably want the US version of windows. Does that help any? Cheers! Andromeda43

Scandisk only works in Windows 98 or ME, but not in Windows XP. For 98 or ME there is a little program, originally put out my Microsoft, called "TweakUI". Using this program you can set up Scandisk to run in different ways, or not at all. Maybe, finding out why its running at all and eliminating that problem, would be the best idea. Good Luck, Andromeda43 Sialkot looks like a very nice place. I checked it out with "Google".

WOW.....that's neat! Thanks for the stat's.

Christ, what does that sound like?I have zero case fans. I keep the side of my case off and have one 12" (305mm) fan blowing right into the case. No clue what the RPMs are, but it's low and I can barely hear it. It's easy to see that some read my post and understood that I was just giving an alternative to loosing drives to overheating, and then some didn't. Most geeks, nerds and tech's have already developed their own remedies. But there are a lot of people who read these forums that don't even know what a hard drive looks like, or are not aware that they can indeed overheat and fail. Well, by now they do and know that there are alternatives to just letting a HD roach itself. I sort of like the 12" fan solution. That's cool.....pun intended. It's a bit like this solution, one of my friends sent me, for cooling an external HD that was running hot: But whether you have just one fan, 7 fans like me or ten fans like "bonestonne", if the fans are clean and of decent quality, the noise factor will be negligible. I've seen many computers with only one PSU fan and one CPU fan that run a lot noisier than mine. Ok, enough on all that. Y'all have a great day and a Happy New Year now, Y'hear? Andromeda43

Yes, it surely is! But the answer, as you can see from others' answers, is not that simple. Everyone has their own idea of what a registry cleaner should be. It's obvious that some like LLXX don't like them at all. But that's OK too. (Really) A registry is like a hard drive....it collects crapola that will eventually cause severe BLOAT, slowdowns and maybe even a CRASH. A registry has to load into RAM on boot up. Keeping it clean of redundant and erroneous entries and compressed, (like defragging a HD) takes up less RAM and makes it more useful and efficient. I really hate buying maintenance software for my computer. So, freeware or maybe even Shareware is the way I like to go. What I get and use, I share with my many Computer Customers. I use "REG Clean" by M$ and "Easy Cleaner" from Toni Arts for my registry cleaners, which do a really great job without taking out things that could cause problems later. Once clean, I use another little FREEware program called "NTREGOPT.exe" to re-compress the registry. I've seen up to 30% reduction in the size of a registry on a customers' PC after a thorough cleaning. Heck, just removing Norton from a PC can leave up to 1891 entries in the registry. They do provide a .reg script to remove those lines. I don't go for glitz or glitter....I go for what works and the programs I've mentioned here are FREE and they just work. Happy Computing! Andromeda43

I'm sorry, did I forget to mention (again) that Norton/Symantec did not write the original code for Ghost. It was written by "Ghostsoft, Inc." in the mid 90's and was only bought by Norton/Symantec years later. Ghost 2003 is almost exactly like the DOS version I was using in 1996, with only a few compatibility enhancements. Don't install the whole GUI package on your HD though. All you need to run Ghost 2003 is "Ghost.exe" and "Mouse.com" on a DOS boot disk. Other files are optional. My custom Ghost boot disk uses a Ansi Color menu and batch files to clean out several areas of the HD (on FAT-32 drives only) before running Ghost. Here's my boot disk menu. ********************************************************* 1. Run Ghost to make a new image. (Windows XP Only) This program will delete all temp files, cookies, histories, etc. The Cleanup works only on a FAT-32 partition. 2. Run Ghost This program runs Ghost alone, with NO cleanup being done. Use this version to do Ghost Restores or Ghost image without cleanup. You must use this option on any NTFS partition. 3. Run Ghost on Windows 98 or ME (del's the Swapfile and all temp's, etc.) 4. Delete all Restore points (Windows XP. Works on FAT-32 partition only) 5. Delete Windows "Pagefile" (Windows XP. Works on FAT-32 partitions only) 6. Remove all the old Restore files in Windows ME. (Revised 12-17-06) Type in a number at the DOS Prompt and press ENTER. ********************************************* As I stated earlier, I can use this boot disk to back up any computer formatted with a MS OS, within the last 16 years. I have this latest version on both floppy disk and CD, for the greatest compatibility. I've recently even put it on a bootable flash drive. Cheers mates! Andromeda43 B)

That's helpful to say the least, but it's not the whole game. Examining the Symantec sites I've found that there are THREE programs involved in completely removing Norton products from a PC. The first is a batch file that removes the attributes from the Norton .dll files so that they can be deleted, by the Second program "SymNRT.exe". Finally the third program is a Registry Script to remove up to 1891 registry entries left over by Norton. For ease of access and execution, I've numbered these programs 1, 2 and 3 and put them into a 7Zip, self extracting file and called it Norton Killer. Download this file into a new folder on your desktop and click it to unpack it, then run the three programs in numerical order. "2-SymNRT.exe" will usually reboot your system. After the reboot, come back and run the last program to clean up the registry. When all three programs have run, your PC should be completely Norton FREE. "Minus Crud is Cool!" Cheers! Andromeda43 B)

A year ago, I tuned up a Dell laptop computer for a young college girl. I gave her all the best FREE AV and AS software and an instruction book on how to upgrade and run each program. OK, its a year later and I had to re-tune that same laptop a few days ago. It was taking 20 minutes to boot up and several minutes to just open a program. In the past year, she had not updated or run any of the programs I had given her. If she had taken it to any Service Center, like the Geek Squad at Best Buy, they would have just reformatted the HD and run the factory restore procedure. Sorry....I don't work that way. I began by installing all the latest versions of AVG, AdAware, Spybot and Trojan Hunter (free Trial). Many viruses and spyware were found and removed by AVG, AdAware and Spybot, but the little PC was still slow and very unresponsive. To just get the context menu for the desktop, took almost a full minute. OK it was Trojan Hunter's turn. T.H. found over 60 instances of trojan activity on that little PC. Once all that was removed by T.H., the little laptop began to once again run like a real computer. After a thorough HD cleaning and a complete Defrag, things were pretty much back to normal. This entire process was accomplished over a six hour period, while I did a retune on Dad's computer and installed a new Dell Laptop for dad. The only time I regret being in the computer repair business, is when people just won't do what I tell them or use the FREE software I give them to keep their computers safe from Malware. Good Luck and Happy Computing, Andromeda43 PS: Get Trojan Hunter and install it as a FREE Trial and get the updates and run it on that computer. You can easily carry T.H. with you to the site, on a CD or flash drive. (I use both) ***************************************** These are the programs I use every day to keep my own PC spotlessly clean. I suggest every person having any Virus or Spyware issues get these programs and use them immediately. Do check for updates to all your security software on a DAILY basis. SPYWARE/Trojan BLOCKERS/REMOVERS: Trojan Hunter, is a first class Trojan Horse Virus removal program. The downloaded version is a 30 day, Fully Functional, free trial. Use the Free Trial to clean up a Dirty system or buy the retail license to have a year of full service plus updates. Download "Trojan Hunter" here: http://www.misec.net/trojanhunter/ From the web page, just click "Download Free Trial Version" It's a 5.9 meg download. Spybot Search & Destroy, a great anti Spyware program. Can be downloaded from: http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_desc...id,22262,00.asp For instructions on how to set up Spybot for best operation, See my Spybot Setup instructions on this webpage. AdAware SE/Personal. Another top notch anti Spyware program. Can be downloaded from: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download506.html Spyware Blaster, a great Spyware Blocker. Protects both I.E. and Mozilla Firefox. Can be downloaded from: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2859.html ANTI-VIRUS PROTECTION: AVG 7.5 FREE: World famous AVG FREE will keep your computer free of viruses, trojans, dialers, etc. By default, it updates and scans for viruses on a daily basis. Can be downloaded from: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390/lng/us/tpl/v5 Scroll down the page to the orange area and then click on: avg75free_430a848.exe (or the currently posted version) Save to your desktop and run the install from there. Immediately get updates. More than one may be required.

My deepest sympathy for anyone or any Company who's locked into using Norton for protection. It's the most invasive system on the planet and doesn't even do its primary job of keep the computer free of viruses and other associated malware. Hundreds of thousands of words have been written here and in other forums on this topic. I've written a few thousand myself. I even put together my own "Norton Killer" package for those wanting to get rid of Norton AV and when Norton would not de-install itself properly. No other AV program has ever had all the bad press as Norton AV has and still people keep buying it. I don't get it! OK, nuff said......you got it, you're stuck with it (evidently) and all I can do is wish you good luck with it. Cheers Mate! Andromeda43

You can always set up a batch file with XCopy, to copy all critical data files to your backup HD. That's quick and inexpensive and requires NO additional software above what's already included with Windows. Now, if you want a complete Image of your C: drive, that's a bit more complex. I've been using Ghost since 1996 when I used it in a shop environment to clone customers HD's. Now for several years I've been using Ghost, after being bought by Norton/Symantec. I'm still using Ghost 2003 on a boot floppy or CD to do all my Backup Image creation. My customized Ghost Boot Disk operates in DOS (Windows ME DOS) and even though DOS cannot see the files on a NTFS drive, Ghost can and will back them up to any other partition, second internal HD or to a DVD burner. For a 5 minute backup, I let Ghost 2003 burn it's compressed image file to my second HD. For a more permanent backup I let Ghost burn it's image file to a DVD and put the info from the floppy disk on the DVD, making it boot right into my Custom ghost menu. Once a Ghost Image file is created on my internal HD, it can easily be copied to a DVD or external storage device, if I so choose. It's a fabulous system and I use it several times a week to backup my own system, and I also use it to make Restore Disks (DVD's) for my friends and customers. My Ghost Boot Disk will allow me to do Ghost backups on most any computer, with any OS all the way back to DOS. FYI, I tried Acronis True Image 9, and found it worked, to a point, but left much to be desired, lacking much of the functionality of Ghost. I've since removed it from my PC. So, my unqualified vote goes out to Ghost 2003. Cheers! Andromeda43 B)

Keep It Cool: Several years ago, when the IBM Deskstar 40 gig hard drive was the hot ticket item, I had four of them die in just one season, in my own PC. When I reached in to remove the last one, it was so hot that it burned my hand. I replaced that failed drive, but began a search that very day for a fix for drive overheating. I tried a single fan HD cooler bolted to the bottom of the drive. No joy. I even tried a "Hermanator", ($49.95) with drive cooler fans mounted in an aluminum heat sink that surrounded the drive. Again, no joy, the drive still got hotter than I'd like it and those little fans were very noisy. Finally I settled on a two-fan cooler, mounted under the drive, with 1/4" spacers to move the fans just far enough away from the bottom of the drive to prevent what Air Flow Experts call an "Air Dam". It worked! My drive now stayed at room temperature. Here's the two-fan assembly: These coolers can be ordered, on-line, here: http://store.cwc-group.com/hadrcowidufa1.html And, here's what a cooler mounted to a Hard Drive, with 1/4" spacers, looks like: Here's my own SATA Hard Drive, with cooler, spaced out in a 5.25" drive bay, for maximum cooling. Here's my backup HD, with cooler, mounted in a lower HD bay. Four little support tabs in the frame had to be bent out to allow for the added height of the drive plus cooler. (No big deal) In the following picture, there was NO place to put a second HD, so I put the second HD, with its cooler in the base of the PC. (up side Down. Secured with a dab of RTV Silicone Sealant) (A friend in Arkansas, used pink Duct Tape to secure his own second drive in his Dell PC) Using a cooler to keep the hard drive from burning itself up is the important thing. How and where you mount the drive, is of little importance. Remember, a cool computer is a Happy computer! Andromeda43 B)

If you have any custom Themes set up in your PC, that can alter the way things display. Make sure you're only using a Windows Default Theme. Just a thought. B)

I've had that 'bat2exe' program since the old DOS days. It's a neat trick, but a lot of work for no more advantage than it gives. The only real application for it seems to be to lock a batch file so no-one can read or modify it. Ok, so I've got a batch file that someone compiled into an .exe file and I want to carry it around on a CD and run it on various computers. Here's what I'd do. Prepare a folder for the cd and put my .exe file into it, Add a little batch file to copy the .exe file to C:\ and run it. If leaving it on c: is a problem, add a closing line to the batch file to delete the .exe once it's run. Finito! Just a thought, B)

What is it you're wanting to do? If you're just wanting a backup DVD for a single computer then you want a HD Imaging program like Ghost or Acronis True Image. Either will do the job very nicely. I have both programs and use them often. Ghost makes me a bootable restore disk,,,,,Acronis does not...I need a separate boot CD to restore an Acronis backup image. For a single computer, just get it all tweaked up , tuned up and cleaned up and make a Backup Image file of the HD (like with Norton's Ghost) , saved to a DVD. That's all you need. I do that three of four times a week on my own computer. If a hard drive crashes (Heaven forbid!) all I have to do is install the new drive and boot up with my restore DVD, perform the restore operation and I'm back in business. That whole process would take me less than thirty minutes. If you want a bootable DVD/CD to install Windows on multiple computers, you probably need to check the MS licensing rules. MS licensing, as I understand it, does not include using a disk with drivers, etc. already installed on it, to set up multiple computers. Good Luck,

I too have a Computer Business and account and customer information that I would not want to loose. I've tried RAID configurations twice and both times went back to a single HD, with a backup or Storage HD and Image files saved to DVD's. So I have Double Backups. The first level is to make a Ghost Image to my second HD as often as I feel necessary. The second level of security is to make a backup directly to a DVD, or copy a backup file to a DVD, take it miles away and store it in a Fireproof Vault. In the many years that I've been at this stuff, I've had hard drives go up in smoke, PSU's go crazy and burn out everything in the PC and one PC stolen. At NO time have I lost all my data. (Maybe some current eMail, but that's about all.) The only really good backup is NOT the one inside of your PC......it's the one that's NOT in your PC at all. Using a RAID setup for data security is foolish at best. I'm currently using "Ghost 2003" to make a backup to drive #2 several times a week. That takes me all of five minutes. I do the backup to DVD once a week, that takes me about 30 minutes. I've set up similar systems for some of my business customers and they really love it. It gives them total control over their data security. Their backups go into a fireproof safe or vault, for complete security. I know that's not what you were asking for.....but it's the best answer I could give you anyway. Good Luck, Andromeda43

Can you get some more ram into that system? 64 megs is hardly enough to even load SE, and leave anything for programs to load into. It will be slower than heck! Try to get at lease 128 megs and even more if possible. SE runs great on 256 megs. I know 98/SE is gonna be around for a while yet, but it gets less and less capable by the day. Computer accessories makers are going to be dropping 98 drivers from all their new hardware. Soon, it will be really hard to buy a printer or scanner that will still work with 98. I think if I had to put an OS on an older computer today, I'd probably use Windows ME, just for the increased USB support if nothing else. I've been pretty successful at tweaking and tuning ME to run fast and stable, so I'm not afraid to use it when needed. But again, 64 megs of RAM, just won't get the job done. There's still lots of the old style RAM around and it's fairly cheap. Oh well, Good Luck, Me B)

What have you tried? and, what are the programs? Seems to me this topic was just dealt with in another thread. B)

I had I.E. 7 on my flash drive for a while before finally installing it. The only reason I did that, was because so many "Experts" said it added some security, etc., to XP. But I don't even use it as a browser. Probably never will either, as Firefox 2.0 with the I.E. Tab plugin does everything I want or need. So I too needed another option in the Poll.....like "I really don't give a Shxx!" (darn) Oh well, different strokes for different folks. That's why we have several different Browsers to choose from. Right? B)

So many questions, and I've so few years left. LLXX is one very smart person and can handle little glitches that a common User would choke on. I build and set up computers on the premise that my customer knows absolutely Nothing beyond what they can see on the monitor. And, that's usually the case. If only technicians came here to this forum then we wouldn't need a help forum, would we? So please, lets keep the answers simple as possible for the thousands of readers who come here to learn, but will never post anything. E-66, Don't get confused. Yes, I load MS Office etc. to D:.....it gives me that option, but it still wants to put its data files (MY Documents) on C: Office is more flexible than some other programs. I always say, "If I'm going to ERROR, I want to ERROR on the side of caution". Over the long haul, your computer will just run with fewer problems if the OS is on C:. It's the way MS designed it to work. Why change it? Just to be different? If my main hard drive smokes, no big deal! I just restore my last Ghost Image from my second drive or my last DVD and then reload Office, etc. That's a simple chore and NO data is ever lost in the process, because all data is kept on C: , which I back up several times a week. Yes, I could "Ghost" my D: drive as well, but why? I do store lots of .zip files, pictures, utilities, etc. on D: Those files can just be copied to a DVD (s) at 4.7gigs each or DL / DVD's at about 9 gigs per disk. I've not done the Dual Boot thing for years. It seemed like I was just setting myself up for a disaster, so I discontinued that practice. Once I upgraded to XP-Pro, I saw no need to be able to go back into 98/SE. NONE. Although, I did make one last Ghost Image of it before I installed XP-Pro. In my early days of running XP, there were several times that I just wanted to go back to my trusty old 98/SE, that ran so good, and forget XP. I put off that temptation then, but still have that Ghost Image of 98/SE in the archives. Recently, after I counted 14 computers in my house/shop, I gave away 8 of them to a fellow tech. Of those remaining, all but one have either 98/SE or ME on them. If I need to reference either of those OS's I just fire up the appropriate PC and go on and do what I need to do. I like having those machines in running condition so I can answer questions from people concerning something in one of those OS's. But having 98 or ME on my Big Computer, is totally redundant. That would serve NO purpose what-so-ever. So if you're not needing 98 for technical reasons, save your data, reformat your HD, install XP and move on. Just learning XP and getting it tuned up to run right, will keep you busy enough for quite a while. This is all a very meaty subject and I could go on and on for hours, or till my fingers start to bleed, but before that happens let me just wish y'all a great weekend and get 'outta heah'. Cheers! Andromeda43 B)

So far there is NO Anti-Spyware program that I've ever found that will both clean and protect your PC 100%. You will need several programs to do the whole job. Spybot is a good start, but don't forget to get the latest updates every few days and then always click "Immunize" to apply any downloaded Immunizations to the browsers. Next you'll need "AdAware SE/Personal" to find the spyware that Spybot misses. Then you'll need "Spyware Blaster" for added spyware blocking. Windows Defender is good too.....and like the others I've already mentioned....it's FREE. Next you can download a 30 day trial of "Trojan Hunter" to help you DE-Infest your HD. Of course you don't want to forget a really good FREE Anti Virus program. I use AVG 7.5 FREE, to keep myself and my hundreds of customers absolutely Virus FREE. There's more.....there's always more, but that should get you started. here's some URL's to get you going. ************************************* These are the programs I use every day to keep my own PC spotlessly clean. I suggest every person having any Virus or Spyware issues get these programs and use them immediately. Do check for updates to all your security software on a DAILY basis. SPYWARE/Trojan BLOCKERS/REMOVERS: Trojan Hunter, is a first class Trojan Horse Virus removal program. The downloaded version is a 30 day, Fully Functional, free trial. Use the Free Trial to clean up a Dirty system or buy the retail license to have a year of full service plus updates. Download "Trojan Hunter" here: http://www.misec.net/trojanhunter/ From the web page, just click "Download Free Trial Version" It's a 5.9 meg download. Spybot Search & Destroy, a great anti Spyware program. Can be downloaded from: http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_desc...id,22262,00.asp For instructions on how to set up Spybot for best operation, See my Spybot Setup instructions on this webpage. AdAware SE/Personal. Another top notch anti Spyware program. Can be downloaded from: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download506.html Spyware Blaster, a great Spyware Blocker. Protects both I.E. and Mozilla Firefox. Can be downloaded from: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2859.html ANTI-VIRUS PROTECTION: AVG 7.5 FREE: World famous AVG FREE will keep your computer free of viruses, trojans, dialers, etc. By default, it updates and scans for viruses on a daily basis. Can be downloaded from: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390/lng/us/tpl/v5 Scroll down the page to the orange area and then click on: avg75free_430a848.exe (or the currently posted version) Save to your desktop and run the install from there. Immediately get updates. More than one may be required. vCleaner, Stand Alone Virus Checker from Grisoft. Can be downloaded from: http://www.grisoft.com/doc/112/lng/us/tpl/tpl01 Save to your Desktop and run from there. REGISTRY CLEANER: Easy Cleaner, the best Registry Cleaner I've found so far. Can be downloaded from: http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm Personal Website = (http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts). Just scroll down to "Download & Installation" and click on the first floppy disk symbol. RegClean (from Microsoft) Written back in the good ol' days of Windows 9x, it's still a pretty good Registry Fixer. It may be used in conjunction with Easy Cleaner. Both of the above registry cleaners can now be downloaded from my (rented) download site at: Here. Click on "Computer Tools" on the menu to enter the download page. FIREWALL: The XP windows firewall is only a 50% firewall, blocking incoming hackers but doing nothing to stop any ET that's already on your PC from "Phoning Home". It seems like almost every program you install anymore, wants to "Phone Home". It's a good idea to NOT allow this activity. My suggested Firewall to prevent this activity is the FREE version of a world famous product called "Zone Alarm". ZA can be downloaded from: http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/cata...lid=dbtopnav_za Happy Computing! Andromeda43 B)

At best an errant driver,,,,at the worst, a virus or spyware just not wanting to close. Can you edit your registry? There are two registry tweaks that force a fast shutdown. They are: ******************************************************************************* Decrease Shutdown Time Cut the amount of time it takes your computer to shut down to only a few seconds. Click Start, click Run, and type regedit. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Control. Click the Control folder. Right click "WaitToKillServiceTimeout" and click Modify. Set the value to 1000 (One Second) *************************************************** Automatically Ending Non-Responsive Tasks HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ AutoEndTasks = Set the value to 1 HungAppTimeout = Set the value to 1000 WaitToKillAppTimeout = Set the value to 1000 (One Second) ********************************************************** I can have several programs open in addition to my AV and AS software and even have my internet connection open and click "Shutdown" and my PC will be down and dark in 8 seconds. If you feel comfortable tweaking your registry, try these two tweaks. They do work. Good Luck, Andromeda43

Keep reading the internet help forums and every day you'll read where some poor guy has a computer with the OS on H: or I: or some other drive than C:, and he's crying for help. It causes more compatibility problems than you could even imagine. Every major program in the world wants to load to C:. It's an industry standard that just should NOT be "Futzed" around with. Give yourself 40 gigs or so on a really huge drive for C: and throw the rest of the HD space into a Storage Drive. Make that Storage partition FAT-32 even if you decide to make C: NTFS. Keep backups of data files, etc., on the storage drive where they can be easily accessed even from a DOS boot disk, in case of trouble on C:. Then keep C: as clean and organized as possible, and backed up with an Imaging program like Norton's Ghost as often as you feel necessary. I do mine at least twice weekly, usually storing the Image files on my second HD, but once a week I let Ghost burn the Image directly to a DVD and make it bootable. That Ghost boot DVD goes into a Fireproof Vault for safe keeping. Good Hard Drive management isn't a talent we're born with. It takes time and study and maybe even a few mistakes to get it right. I've been at it for 26 years and I've worked out a system that just works fabulous. In many years and many hard drive crashes, I've yet to loose the first important data file. To save space on C:, I load very large Suites like MS Office and Corel Suite on D:. The program files really don't care where they are. The "MY Documents" and "MY files" folders remain on C:. There's no reason in the world for all those thousands of program files to be on C: where they have to be scanned or backed up over and over again. With proper management and maintenance, I still get my whole C: drive on a single DVD with Ghost 2003, using High Compression. "God, I love it when a plan comes together!" Good Luck, Andromeda43