Preserved Topic: Well that was fun (Page 1 of 1)

12 hours I've been at it !!
Decided to format my HD due to problems and install windows 2k pro. realised once I'd formatted that I had to reinstall '98 and install 2k on top of it.
once 2k was up and running I installed the drivers for my modem which I had cunningly downloaded off the net, only to find that Win2k doesn't support Gearbox - the program used by my ISP to connect (ntl).

I then find out I cannot format with 2k installed, had to create a dos partition in order to format. I then went back to win98 and spent 2 hours trying to get my modem to be recognized. I just love my pc


~We're not here for long, we're here for fun~

Morph:
Now that you went through that GHOST it!

This weekend, for no reason it seems, my
home network no longer worked. I ran
diagnostics from DOS which seemed to rule
out the NICs.... the ping test failed though.
After 30 minutes of plugging and unplugging
and 20 minutes of re-runnning the network
installation i finally gave up and decided it was
time to buy a new hub (or that router i've wanted)

but i decided one last thing, reghost the partition.
that fixed it! time spent to reghost? about 12 minutes.

I've heard of this Ghosting quite a lot here recently but I'm not at all familier with it. can you explain it?


~We're not here for long, we're here for fun~

I guess ShootingStar is talking about a programm called Norton Ghost. It lets you save an image of your partition(s) to another hdd or CD. That's pretty handy because it only takes about five minutes to get a working Windows back that way.

kuckus (cell #282)

Yes, sorry, I meant Norton Ghost (Symantec).
There are other programs DriveImage etc. but I haven't found any reason to change from Ghost.

Once I have my OS's (I have 2) installed and fully "tweaked" I ghost both of them to separate ghost files .gho. By full tweaked I mean everything works: ICS, network, all preferences, all registry tweaks, activation codes, serial numbers, etc.

The next step, I add my basic applications (installed twice - once for each OS - but on the same partition to save space. This include MS Office, Winamp, Photoshop for example. Then i ghost both OS's again.

The next step after that: I add still more applications as well as my Norton Anti-Virus (this way my subscriptions don't run out) and any other tweaks. I do not ghost data but you could if you want to.

The Ghost files can then be kept on a CD if they fit, on multiple CDs (called spanning), or on removable media, or another drive. I keep all my ghosts on another drive
or another partition for speed. Copies are also kept on CDs in the unlikely case both my drives would crash.

So I have about 3 ghost files for each OS. Ghosts can range from 500 meg to several gigs depend on how much you want to backup. You can chose to have everything on one ghost
file but if you later find a problem on your system it will also be on the ghost

Once your system is ghosted and CD'd for archive, trust me you will not ever worry again about a virus, windows bug, trojan or anything else.

what if your system goes down? my network did.
you choose between investingating for an hour and reghosting in 10 minutes.
lol. i did both. was it the cables? was it the NIC on the client? how about the NIC
on the Host....was it the hub? was in the OS? i never found it...reghosting fixed it
so obviously it was the OS.

There are caveats. Your ghost will not reflect changes made since the ghost was made-- not a big deal--and make sure your data is kept on separate partition so you don't lose any data files (I always reformat before reghosting). Also, Ghost is run from DOS and is not the friendliest animal in that it doesn't use the terminology you would expect. (I have not used the Win2k Version or NTFS versions).

A CD burner is great for data files (particulary when the cost is so cheap). One last point, over the last 3 years I have made about 12-20 ghost images and about 8-10 restores - without a single failure or hiccup.

As you know, it can take hours to have an OS and all your applications working perfectly.
That's the time to Ghost. The next install will only take 5-12 minutes.

I should be paid by Symantec for this.



[This message has been edited by ShootingStar (edited 06-17-2002).]