[GoneFishing]

my laptop has Win7 on it, and I let a few friends borrow it, but I don't let them take it out of the house, but I am still uncomfortable, can they Ghost the drive and install it on another computer, if they can is there a way to stop/disable this, I am worried that they can copy my OS and cause me problems like I do not want to think about

[KStrawn]

GoneFishing, on 07 November 2009 - 05:17 PM, said:

my laptop has Win7 on it, and I let a few friends borrow it, but I don't let them take it out of the house, but I am still uncomfortable, can they Ghost the drive and install it on another computer, if they can is there a way to stop/disable this, I am worried that they can copy my OS and cause me problems like I do not want to think about

Hello @GoneFishing and welcome to the PC World Forums

If you can please tell me what Ghosting the drive means, that will be great.

On second thought, you might mean Norton Ghost, and the way of disabling that way of disk cloning is by uninstalling it. Go into Control Panel and go into "Programs > Programs and Features". You should see an icon for Norton Ghost. Right-click the icon, and click Uninstall.

You may also want to password-protect the Admin account and turn the Guest account on for your friends to access. To do this, click Control Panel from your Start menu and go into "System And Security > User Accounts". From your account, click "Add Password". Type the password you want to use, retype it in the second box, and press Enter. To turn the Guest account on, click the Guest account and click "Enable". You should then be able to log out of your account and tell your friends to log in under "Guest", which has limited system access.

[compnovo]

GoneFishing, on 07 November 2009 - 05:17 PM, said:

my laptop has Win7 on it, and I let a few friends borrow it, but I don't let them take it out of the house, but I am still uncomfortable, can they Ghost the drive and install it on another computer, if they can is there a way to stop/disable this, I am worried that they can copy my OS and cause me problems like I do not want to think about

GoneFishing,
Ghosting a drive is making an exact image of the computer's hard drive, and is usually done to either back up a drive or when someone installs a larger drive on the same computer and doesn't want to reinstall Windows.
That means that if your friends ghost your drive they would have to install the image on an identical laptop or there would be significant driver conflict with virtually every piece of hardware on their computer (usually the computer won't even boot).
I don't blame you for not letting these so-called friends take your laptop.
Bryan