Ghost problem and DriveImageXML question

[bevills1]

Around a month ago I created Ghost image using Ghost 2003 of WinXP SP2 on NTFS drive with no problem. Recently after installing SP3 Ghost 2003 no longer sees hard drives when Ghost restarts the system to do the imaging. Is there a fix for this apparent SP3 problem, or is there a disadvantage to uninstalling SP3?

Also according to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTEnKA7tOXM DriveImageXML can create image from the OS while running but can't restore image to the running OS. It states image may be restored by slaving the drive to another system, but there's no space for slave drive in a laptop. What's the best way to restore such image on a lap top? Will installing WinXP on USB drive, booting to USB drive and restore image from there to the lap top drive work? I assume doing this would create a dual boot system with menu to choose which to boot, but that's okay.

[nic2k4]

Get Acronis True Image, much less clunky than the crap Symantec puts out now a days and it's still being updated.

[bevills1]

The link for Acronis True Image shows it's $50 for home version, but it has a link to download without asking any payment info. Is that download a free version?

[RLT69]

Ghost 2003 isn't crap it's a very good program.

You can have Ghost create a boot disk which you can use to clone your system. The boot disk boots Ghost into DOS (or PC-DOS depending on how you create the disk). Using the boot disk, you won't have an issue with SP3.

[bevills1]

I learned DriveImageXML can be run from BartPE CD, made BartPE CD, made DriveImageXML image of laptop drive, booted to BartPE CD and restored image. However, the restored image failed to boot. Coincidentally some Windows updates were installed when I shutdown after DrvieImageXML image creation was completed. After the restored DriveImageXML image failed to boot, I decided to try Ghost again, and it worked flawlessly just as it did before SP3 install. I can only guess one of those Windows updates fixed some problem in SP3, but I'm very glad to have Ghost 2003 working again. Great program when Windows doesn't muck it up!