It's simply unbeliveable. Ghost is an imaging program for backups and restores. What is different about it is that it will literally make an image of the entire disk or partition. In case a program fails, usually the operating system, one can quickly bring it back to life without having to go throught all those reinstall procedures normally used to install an operating system. This includes everything: drivers, registry associations, etc. So, sure enough I had divided my hard drive into three partitions: win98, games , and storage. Just 5 minutes ago I began to experience some weird win98 problems that I could not solve. So, I loaded ghost from a floppy, went through the procedures to restore the image of my operating system and, voila, 3 minutes later I've got my system like I had it at the time I made the image file. In less than 5 minutes I am back in operation. I know that this is not about ghost, but who wants to reinstall all of the sims and spend hours bringing the system back to life when a simple program like ghost makes it happen instantly. So, it's partitions and ghost. Obviously, ghost is a commercial program and , from my name here in this forum, I hope that no one thinks this is an advertisement. I simply wanted to share some news to those of us simmers who may not know about this, and always fear a system crash.tony

It really helps to have the OS in it's own partition...[h3]Ken Salter (aka SaltyDog)[/h3]MSFS & Fly! Forum Moderator[link:http://www.grid.org/services/teams/team.htm?id=5E79C613-0A60-4A3B-BDC1-F9EE49F2D4FE]Join the AVSIM Online Cancer Fight!!

Thanks for sharing, Tony :)I have partitioned my harddrive in 4 parts, and just reinstalled on a new puter, leaving Fly II and games in another partition. I`m going to buy av DVD-writer and use Ghost this time to backup my system.

I've used ghost for many years and find it to be an invaluable tool since I do a lot of experimenting with my computer! :)What I do first of is to make a ghostimage once I've installed just the basic system (OS and drivers). Then I install everything and make a new ghost. I have the ghost program on the same partition where I put the images since it's quicker to load from there than from a floppy.I also use a mobile rack system where the hard disk is kept in a casette that I then slide into a rack that is firmly mounted in the chassi. I have one casette with a disk for games and another one with a disk for more "useful" programmes. Switching between the casettes is a matter of shutting down the computer, pulling out one casette and inserting another one (takes about three seconds) and then fire up the computer again! :)Another good thing with Ghost is that it's very cheap! :)/Krister

Will it work for XP? If I restore the OS do I need to call MS again and re-register XP?Also, we are lucky enough to have an Intelligent Sim that is not linked to the OS directory, that is, if you move your Terminal RealityFly II directory from one disk to other, you will FLY as usual without having to modify a single line! isn't that a beauty? I know that for sure because I upgraded my PC, loaded a 160GB HD and started from ground zero, installed XP, but instead of installing FLY! II from zero I just copied the directory, it was ready to Fly in a minute!I am still curious about Ghost and XP though...

I believe it works for xp, but check Norton's web site to be sure. An image is complete, including anything that pertains to registring a program.tony

I use Ghost 2002, and it is compatible with XP with one exception:You cannot write an image file to an NTFS partition. There's no problem making an image of an NTFS partition. You just have to save that image to CD or to a FAT32 partition. I have a FAT32 partition on my secondary HD for this purpose. I see on Symantec's site that this limitation has been removed in Ghost 2003.You don't have to re-activate XP after restoring an image if the original image that you restore was activated, and is restored to the same computer.Dan