Overwriting XP install with fresh ghosted image...

[linkinkampf19]

So... I gave up on Wubi. I figured it wasn't worth the risk, and now I'm stuck with a new problem. For some time now, XP has been crashing, firstly explorer, and that takes the debugger (Dr. Watson) along with it. It seemingly happens when I try and copy or delete files, and it's more or less a Russian roulette. I have no idea when it'll happen.

Here's the question:

I have both XP and Vista installed on my first IDE (~160GB in size, ~80GB a piece). I have a ghosted image of just XP (made before I decided upon Vista), and I am just going to wipe the XP partition, and reimage it with said ghost. Will this screw up my Vista install, or will everything be okay? I have two other options. Screw Vista and wipe the entire physical drive clean, then use the ghost, or build a slipstreamed XP install and still wipe the drive clean... What would be the best course of action?

I could bypass this altogether though, if anyone knows what the hell is happening with explorer. Only thing I can think of is that I have the uxtheme patch/hack installed, and that is messing shit up. But beyond that, I'm dumbfounded.

[lolturnip]

Ghost is fairly simple. It will ask for the source image which you have saved somewhere, then it will ask for the destination of where you want the image to be installed. Here, just be careful and choose your XP partition (it will show both your xp and vista partition) and you should be good to go.

Double check the source / destination locations just so you don't fuck up the wrong partition.

[linkinkampf19]

Well, what I think I'm going to do is wipe the drive clean. If I were to format this drive again as C: (where XP was originally installed), will the image restore properly?

[linkinkampf19]

Just a quick update. I ended up reformatting the partition, and easily restored the ghosted image. Except for a few tweaks since then (May 2008), Everything is working as if I never even did the reformat.

[lolturnip]

Well, what I think I'm going to do is wipe the drive clean. If I were to format this drive again as C: (where XP was originally installed), will the image restore properly?

To answer your question, yeah the image would still have worked fine.