There have been freeware disk imagine software around for quite a while (e.g., DriveImage XML).  Recently Eusing introduced a new one, Todo Backup. They usually include an option to directly clone one disk to another.

Are there any reasonable ways to use these programs to transport a win xp OS plus applications from one PC to another (assume I have 2 valid windows licenses) ?

I think it would be a gain, if FARR could, in general, pipe the output of other programs into its number list or menu - also if it could pipe the contents of a file into its list. I don't think FARR can improve on the batch file I list within this thread, for wcd. But you ask:

> wcd has a commandline tool that lets you specify a substring on the commandline and > > > outputs a simple list of matching directories? Or does it add extra info to the output that > > needs to be cleaned up.

Read about wcd at:  http://www.xs4all.nl/~waterlan/. It is a windows program, that runs in a cmd box. It works almost exactly like FARR, only for all directories in all partitions. You enter some characters of a directory, with or without wildcards. wcd then presents a list of possible matching directories in one of three formats: a numbered list, an list numbered with letters of  the alphabet, a directory tree that you can navigate. You you hit a key, for instance, the letter c - and your favorite file manager comes up in the corresponding directory to `c'. This gives you up to 26 choices with one keystroke of a letter. The menu screen can be piped to the standard out, for inclusion in FARR. The menus need to be (easily) cleaned of their own indexes of numbers or letters, by a program like sed or grep. Then Farr could list the first 0 choices. However, wcd creates a plain ascii file that lists all directories. That file could be directly searched by any grep utility or FARR itself to produce a list of directories that match some string - which then get listed in FARR's lower list screen.

the TinyEV plugin won't help, because it requires the  everything program to be constantly running in the background. And the Everything program does not have an easy way of listing only matching directories.

Hope I was clear, if verbose!

I used to be able to quickly go to any directory in win9x. I can't do it in XP: Hit a hotkey (e.g., F5), get prompted for a string (e.g., I enter tmp), see a list of numbered paths that end in the string, then when I pick a number - up comes my filemanager (I use xplorer2) in that directory.

I know FARR and/or plugins can do this, but I do not have the expertise to know how. There is a program  that almost does it, with advantages to something like locate32:  WCD creates a database of all directories in all partitions. When you feed it a string, it displays a list of possible directories, using alphabet letters (not numbers). This  gives you up to 26 possibilities. When you type a letter (e.g., d), it does to the directory corresponding to `d'. Alas this all happens in a dos or cmd.exe box. For windows xp, it generates a wcdgo.bat file f that basically executes ``cd targetdirectory''

If I can get the output list of a program like locate32 or wcd in the list box of FARR, this would be an adequate approximation. I would only get 9 choices for a  directory, but this would do. Ideally, I could write an alias that runs wcd in FARR's window, instead of a dos box. That is: wcd tmp makes farr show a list of tmp directories. I hit, say, number 7, and xplorer2 launches showing directory number 7 (xplorer2 takes a directory as an argument).

Any howto ideas?