. . to move everything to a new hard disk without having to reinstall any drivers, software or otherwise touch a properly working** Windows installation. This particularly saves time when the owner has lost all the drivers (almost always), and essential when the owner "can't find all those software installations CDs" (most of the time).
The XCopy gets just about everything but the registries and other open Windows files (the /c parameter is essential so it keeps on copying after errors (such as not being able to copy a registry file)). The files it can't copy are then copied booted to DOS.
Installing the same version of Windows 98 onto this disk should adopt all registry settings, hardware drivers, licenses, etc. It won't even ask for the registration key (but you'd better have gotten that from the registry anyway, just in case something goes wrong).
Yes, the registries have nothing on the MBR, BIOS Parameter Block or any other low level disk stuff, so the new disk is no problem even if it's a radically different size.
Now, if you put this new disk in a new machine, you're going to have to play with drivers a bit, but that's usually no big problem - and the software installs will still be OK. In the same machine, nothing should notice that anything has changed (except there's more room).
If the source disk is really flakey, you may have to just XCopy the Windows directory structure, install Windows and boot on the new drive, then XCopy directories one by one. I've had to restart Windows as many as twenty times to get everythng from a dying disk.
I've never used ghost, because it requries too much preparation, a properly working machine, etc. By time a machine comes to me it's either too late, not networked or something. My methods (I have several) are easy, require minimal preparation, and work most of the time.
If you have to blow the registries, that makes things a lot more complex, but you can still preserve the desktop, start menus and such. A lot of icons won't work until you reinstall the software, though. I have to emphasize that to the client because the machine looks exactly the same.
Xtree Gold can be made to work from a single boot floppy with plenty of room for other utilities. All you really need are the basic functions and the editor. Generally it can open only a single subdirectory at a time on todays systems due to memory limitations, but that's usually enough.
With Windows up and running, use ZTree, a much more modern interpretation of XTree without the limitations (also available for OS/2), but it won't run under DOS. ZTree is great for doing copy operations Explorer doesn't support or support well. I use a combination of all three of these tools when reconstituting a system after major surgery.
I've found some Windows95 installations cannot be reconstituted no matter what, you have to upgrade to Windows 98 to get the machine to run again.
**for Microsoft's definition of "properly working".