[SpiderDragon]

Hello there,

Let's get down to it. I've purchased a Dell GX260 for my mother for Christmas. 1.7 ghz Celeron, 256megs ram, 20gig drive, CDRW, WinXP Pro. Off lease on Ebay for $186 shipped! I know it's not top of the line, but this will be more computer than my mom will ever need. When I got it, I booted it up right away to check out the system. I was pleasantly surprised. It has XP pro....period. No system "bloat". However I got it with no installation disks. If anything ever goes wrong...I'm screwed. I've been doing some reading about creating "homemade system restore" disks. I'd like to do that now while the system is clean. I know I can't make an XP install disk. That's ok. I just want a way to restore the system in the event of a Windows "glitch". Is it indeed true that I can create these system restore disks? If so how? What programs do I need? Is it possible that there is freeware available to pull this off?

I'd just like the security of having the restore disks...just in case. Anyone got any ideas? My time is runnig out! I'd like to have this done along with all my mothers current programs installed and configured before Xmas! Please help!

Thanks in advance!

Kacy

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The easist way i have found to have a recovery disk is to use Norton's Ghost. The cheapest way to get Ghost is to buy a Nortons system works CD off Ebay. I paid $16(with shipping) for a system works 2003 cd there. Heres a guide to using it.

http://ghost.radified.com/

SRX660

[SRX660]

The easist way i have found to have a recovery disk is to use Norton's Ghost. The cheapest way to get Ghost is to buy a Nortons system works CD off Ebay. I paid $16(with shipping) for a system works 2003 cd there. Heres a guide to using it.

http://ghost.radified.com/

SRX660

[SpiderDragon]

Thanks SRX660,

I had come across that tutorial in my searches. I had also come across this one at Tech Fourms.net I know Ghost would be my best option, but due the the fact that I'm pressed for time I cannot order a copy on Ebay. And I was hoping to find a free way to do it. I may be asking for to much, but I guy can hope can't he!

Is Ghost my only option for creating this disk or is there something else I can use? I do still have some time, but I wanna get the ball rolling in case I have problems.

Any other thoughts on this?

Thanks in advance!

Kacy

[SRX660]

I have tried using other software and a few freebie utilities . Most either can't live up to what they say they can do or is just as expensive as buying a XP pro CD from some of the companys that sell them relatively cheap. Acronis true image works but costs $50.

I have not tried this but it could work.

http://www.esuperdea...1192&menu_no=11

You make your choices and see what happens. I started using Ghost last year and now make system images of every computer i use. It sure makes it easy to restore the computer. I would rather use a ghost image than a windows cd anymore. It's just that much easier to install.

Surely you can wait a week or two to make a set of recovery cd's of the computer. order one up and make the cd's later. That is where i really like ghost. All your program's, settings, etc are saved with the OS with Ghost. No need to reinstall everything all over again.

SRX660

[SpiderDragon]

Okay, I got Ghost. Local sale after rebates $29.00. It's Norton Ghost 10 but it also ships with Ghost 2003. From what I've read I think I like the idea of 2003 better. Something about imaging Windows while it's running makes me uncomfortable. I'm finding hardly any info on using 2003 with XP. I'd like to backup to cd-r's instead of a partition. I also read somewhere about a "ghost on cd" command switch that will make the image disks themselves bootable.

Can anyone walk me through this process? The only things on the disk are XP Pro and Nero 6 so I don't imagine the backup to be huge. I could really use some help here. Last thing I want to do is screw this up!! And again I'm on an even deeper time crunch. This system is a Xmas gift that needs to have all moms prog's and data installed. Not to mention wrapped!!

Help PLEASE!!!

Thanks !!!!