Thanks to all that gave me information on restoring my drive.

I have a 500 gig hard drive with Win XP PRO SP 3 on it.
I took an image of the drive when it was all going well, using Macrium Reflect.

Now, trying to restore the drive using the image, I FIND that the Macrium Reflect program gets to a point where it incompletes.
The wording reflect gives me is " Drive C: is locked. The partition you are trying to overwrite is being used by Windows."

Can someone advise as to how I should proceed with this please?

My thinking is that because the drive image is 250 gig that the C:drive doesnt have enough space left on it.

Since I took the original image, my COMPUTER drive now, has used 275 Gig.

Can I do a comparison of files between the image and the C: Drive and just replace the one/s that are different?

Is there a different answer as to how I might be able to restore my computer, that I havent tried as yet?

Thank you ImnoGuru. I'm not familiar with the program, so I don't know about its functions as far as making comparisons between the image and the current state of the drive.

However, you can't change the image of a system drive (in this case, C:) while the OS is currently running on it. This kind of procedure usually has to be done out of Windows. A LOT of disk imaging software can create a bootable CD specifically for this purpose so that the disc image can be applied over what's on the drive already.Restoration of the system partition needs to be done at boot. Macrium Reflect should tell you that and then automatically reboot.See Here...Thank you for your reply quaxo, ALLAN and patio.

I will see if I can create this CD then.
Thank you patio for the link.