So, I finally gave up and bought the Corporate Edition of Ghost - version 7.5 You'll recall that I bought ghost personal edition for $60 and made a snapshot of a laptop partition. A week later, I tried to restore it to another system, and it says, I'm probably in violation of the license agreement. After re-reading the EULA, I agree that it would be a violation, so I purchase the corporate edition from Symantec's web-site. The checkout page says "corporate edition" type=download $385 Then there is another item for: "media pack" $28.95" I figure, "who needs the media pack", so I take it out of the list. For the next 2 hours I try to download the software It keeps saying, "if you selected download, click on the download link above", but the download button doesn't seem to do anything I figured that it was some java script incompatibility with my mozilla browser. The next day, I call symantec, and the helpfull lady says, "oh, we don't sell software, you have to go to one of our partners". I said, I bought it from your web site!" and she says, oh, yeah, thats not really us, its one of our partners I said, "so should I start guessing?" She says to hold on 20 minutes later, she comes back with "its digital river. you need to call them". I say, "do you have a phone number"? She says, "please hold". 5 minutes later she has a phone number, so I call digital river. Finally talk to some guy who says, "thats corporate edition software - we don't offer that for download" So I say, well, there is a download button on the fricking web site He says, "no there isn't" I said, Yes, there is So we go back and forth, and I finally say, lets go through the purchase Anyway, we get to the checkout and sure enough, it says, "download" He says, "oh, that button - well, it doesn't do anything" OK, so now we;'re getting somewhere. So I said, "fine. no problem, so can you please bend me over and sell me the media pack" which he promptly does. I bet you think that my troubles are over, right?? I figure now that I purchased the licenses and the corporate edition, I can happily clone disks using the personal edition, and I'm coverred. I installed 3 laptops that way. A week later the corporate edition arrives. I notice a big disclaimer while installing it that says, "Hey, we're pretty serious about software piracy, so if you have any questions, please call our license experts and we'll clarify for you", so I called them. I said, "Hey, I installed the ghost 2003 edition on an XP machine, then made a copy of that image and restored it to 2 other laptops. Am I coverred by the license agreement for the corporate edition that I just purchased?" He says, "nope". Ok, so, if I simply uninstall the personal edition, and re-install the corporate edition, then will I be ok? He says, "we don't have an upgrade from personal edition 2003 to corporate edition 7.5" Alright, so that didn't really answer my question, but I just assume that as long as I get this done, I'm ok. In the mean time, I figure I can try to re-image another laptop. So I boot off the dos diskettes after replacing the ghost.exe with the one from the corporate edition. It comes up fine, and I choose to restore the XP image from the network drive. error 84: Unknown Ghost Version: I need a later version of ghost! Shit, this is a bad thing.... Are all the images that I have useless now. Back on the phone to symantec. Have to call customer service because calls to tech support will cost me $95.00. I ask the guy again, figuring I might get a different answer, "Can I use the basic edition of ghost, 2003 under the corporate license"? "nope" Um, so the image files made by ghost 2003 can't be restored by the corporate edition version 7.5? He says, "yeah, thats correct" And also, the corporate edition can't write image files greater than 2GB. And the files are limited to the old DOS 8.3 naming conventions. He says, "yeah, thats correct" Sigh, ok, Is there any workaround? He says I can purchase the Gold Support option, and then I wil the corporate edition doesn't understand files created by the personal edition So, I boot XP on my laptop, remove ghost 2003, and install He says, "yeah, you can buy a gold support package" which will give you a free upgrade to the new corp edition when it comes out Ok, I don't see how that will help me now, but when will it come out? "I don't have that information" Ok, so how much is it? "I don't have that information" Where can I buy it? "From the same reseller where you purchased the software" Ok, thats you guys "We don't sell software directly, sir" Look, I don't want to go through this again. I bought it from your store - the URL is symantecstore.com - so stop telling me you don't sell software So, he says, I can give you a list of partners where you can buy it Ok, I start calling the partners Hi, I purchased the corporate edition of symantec ghost and I'd like to buy a gold support contract - how much is it? "Ah, yeah, I've got that information right here - Symantec Antivirus - gold support......." No, not antivirus - ghost. Oh, we don't sell that.... I hang up. So, I uninstall the ghost 2003 on my laptop XP and try to install the corporate edition. It fails saying that its unable to determine the edition of ghost that is installed, and I should remove it manually. I google for this and find a couple of references to removing symantec software manually. It seems that I have to run regedit and munge through locating dozens of registry keys and delete them. I fire up regedit and start looking for the keys - after searching for 6 of them, I noticed none of them existed, so I just guessed - I searched for every instance of symantec and deleted the keys or the hive or whatever. I reboot and the machine comes up - thats a good sign. And the software installs! Hooray! Now I apply all the windows update, the office updates, and re-create the image file. It all seems to work - although it takes 3 reboots. I go to the other machine that I've been trying to image all day. Boot off the floppies and try to restore the image - for some reason it won't let me delete the fricking NTFS partition, or even restore over it. Looks like I have to run something to delete the partition. So I boot the linuxcare bootable toolbox - its old, but fdisk works - then I delete the NTFS partition and re-boot off the ghost diskettes. I choose the image and restore it - setting the partition to 20GB so I will have room to install linux. Its now 4:59pm and I've been working on this since 9:45am. Well, the rest of the rant becomes a microsoft problem.....