Thanks, Cindy. I didn't expect this to be a picnic, so I really appreciate all the help I can get. Sometimes the problem is too little information, but in this case the problem is mainly too much. I'm trying to take it one step at a time. The trick is to figure out which small step to take next.

Mike

>Mike,
>
>If you're not used to WinNT, Win2K will be a learning experience. WinXP is not so far beyond that, and perhaps an easier jump for a non-WinNT person.
>
>I don't know about corrupt restore points, and now I'm curious to know too. WinXP is not as given to corruption as Win9x. You're in for a treat.
>
>As far as I know there are no WinXP tools for dynamic repartitioning. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I'm more of the type to Format and start over, perhaps with different partitions, than to re-partition in place. Since I put everything in My Documents, it's easy to find in Explorer. Otherwise I keep everything in one large C:\ partition on this machine. On my other machine, D:\ is all just backups.
>
>One thing I'd like to point out, there are ways you are probably used to doing things that stem from your long-time use of Win95. Think about doing things in new ways, the way that's easiest in the new technology. Don't just perpetuate the old ways. You're doing well to be asking around here for people's experiences. I did the same about a year ago.
>
>
>>Cindy,
>>
>>Restore points sound like a wonderful feature of XP, but I'd be a little worried about what happens on those occasions when the data XP relies on to restore from gets clobbered. It still seems that multiple partitions and a tool like Norton Ghost would offer additional protection.
>>
>>I wonder if XP has any improvements related to dynamic repartitioning, or do I still need a utility like PartitionMagic. Anyway, the jump from Windows 95B straight to Windows 2000 Professional is going to be enough to keep me busy for a good while, not to mention my greater interest in exploring VFP7 than Windows XP. By the time I get to XP, they may be calling it Windows 3000. I should live so long!
>>
>>Mike
>>
>>>Daniel, Michael,
>>>
>>>This is where WinXP is such a joy to work with. One day I installed a version of McAfee which slowed Outlook Express to a crawl. Simple to get rid of, I called up WinXP's restore points and backed up one. It didn't affect any data (OE newsgroup files) at all, just the registry and the installed programs. It took about a minute and a reboot.
>>>
>>>If you want to specifically create a restore point, with a description of why you're creating it, you can, otherwise they are created pretty much every day, depending on the space allocated for them.
>>>
>>>In addition you can "forward" restore, or undo an undo. ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>2. Backup
>>>>In my experience, most of the time when you're forced to format/reinstall a system, it's because of an install/uninstall that didn't go well. The best way to protect you from these bad surprises is to make an image of your C:\ drive before you install new software. I often make a snapshot before and after installing new software. This allows me to make a rollback if something goes wrong. This is why I split the data from the programs. If you decide to work with disk images, then the fastest way is to save the image to another partition in a first step and save the image to CDs in a second step. To create an image of my C:\ drive (4 GB) it takes about 18 minutes.