command line?

how can it be command line? i'll have to read more.

nice find, tho.

has any body used imagex.exe to make an image of C:drive(XP say NTFS) to C: drive and then
epxnding it back into the C: drive again ????
in WAIK instruction for prepairing an image and deploying it
roughly it says :
put imagex.exe  on the roout of your WIN VISTA PE (ie put it in ISO folder before making the ISO and subsequently the CD)
-->insert PE CD into master computer(the one you want to make the image of)and start the computer.

-->capture an image of master installation by using image X at command prompt type
d:\imagex.exe /compress fast /capture c:\myimage.wim

and to expand it back in a later date
boot with win PE again type:
D:\imagex.exe /apply c:\myimage.wim  C:
what it says really is to copy it to an external drive then prepair and partion the HDD
and copy the image back to C: drive which would be empty and only has the image on it.
I was wondering if old windows is left in place what happens   does it over write it
or pops up an error message!!!????

before I do that(TO MY WINDOWS xp) I need to make a ghost image of my hdd TO AN EXTERNAL hdd FOR SAFE KEEPING.
WHICH IS OUT OF ACTION AT MOMENT
so  I thought has any body else tried this and has it worked ???
because if it works it has advantage over ghost that you can copy the image to the same
partition on the same HDD .

I thought I ask before getting too curious and Knakering my pc Without a backup.

Regards Ben

I managed to do a Little experiment with imagex.exe to see if it works with windows XP
because as you know it is the latest MIcrosoft tool for windows Vista.
one of my computers P4 1.3 with 512MB RAM and 80GB Harddisk(PATA IDE) Windows XP SP2
so I checked in windows explorer and found out that I had 3.3GB used space and the rest of
HDD was empty and it was NTFS .
so I booted with PE with imagex.ex put on root of cd (put it on ISO folder before making ISO
and burning the CD)
I typed D: pressed enter
and then typed:
imagex /boot /capture C: C:\myimage.wim "windows XP "
and pressed enter and it starte making the image as you can see with /boot flag i was hoping
for a bootable image.
it said first
files and folders excluded from capture by default:
\windows\GSG
\recycler
\system volume information
\page file.sys
\hiberfiles.sys
\$ntfs.log
progress:xx% 12.15 remaining
....
.....
progess: 100%
successfully imaged C:

so I went into windows XP and cheked the size of the image myimage.wim (880,360KB)ie 880MB
a big reduction in size from 3.3MBto 0.880MB
so i thought it probably has only copied windows not my apps and data.
so I made a new directory on C: drive called mount
and mounted the image to that empty mount directory.opened a comand window(CMD)
and then typed
cd \
cd c:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86

imagex /mountrw c:\myimage.wim 1 c:\mount
do not forget the 1

and went to windows explorer and chcked the size of that mount directory first it was 1.8MB
which ment that it nearly more than doubled in size.
when I looked in the c:\mount directory all my file and apps where there
at this stage I should have checked for files
NTLDR
NTDETECT.COM
BOOT.INI
and could have easily copied and pasted them to the files inside the image .

as I still did not have a back up of my drive I could not take the risk of installing it on that big 80GB HDD
so here where I went wrong I did a little calculation 1.82GB + 0.86 GB =2.68GB so I had an old £ GB HDD so
I thought wrongly that there might be enough room on there .so I copied the image to that and unpluged the 80BG HDD and

pluged it into the 3GB HDD
booted with VistaPE2 and again D:
and typed:
imagex /apply  C:\myimage.wim 1  c:
do not forget 1
progress:27% 11.20mins remaining
successfully applied image.
so I thought great restarted computer and it could not find boot HDD so I booted with XP boot floppy
http://www.postbox.wanadoo.co.uk/xpboot.exe
and choose first partition and it booted into windows
but it got stuck as I realized windows was configuring and adding files to C: drive and obviously 3.3BG do not fit in 3Gb
so I left it and replaced my 80 Gb hdd and booted back into windows I was thinking of trying it with that 80Bg HDD
but since I had putAWIK and DOT net fram work 2 and XML bla Bla Xp had become for some unknown reason more stable
so I thought better leave it and go to sleep instead.

so my conclusion is stick to ghost for now !
as this tool is for windows vista although it could be made to work with XP
it is a very powerful and clever tool
and you can not but think that the person who wrote it must be
a very clever and brainy  person

regards BEN