I’m not much of an IT guy. But I got it in my head a while back to seek out a way to install a fresh operating system (winxppro), tweak all my settings, fonts, networks, drivers etc… load all my favorite programs fresh and tweak all of their concomitant settings,… you get the picture… and before I do anything more I wanted to burn an image, that I could boot into, to recover the computer EXACTLY as it is at that point.
Surely there must be a way for a non techie to accomplish that VERY BASIC TASK. Sorry for the shouting there. But I’m going a bit crazy here. After asking about I discover, astonishingly enough, that there actually is no simple way to do this. It’s simple enough, after you master one of half a dozen programs available, but for the beginner it’s just not a simple thing at all. How can that be? I just want the EXACT image for later recovery?
I finally settled on Acronis after it garnered the majority of recommendations and gave it a whirl. That was a week ago. Yeah, I’m a slow learner with IT. I admitted that. I just screwed up one more attempt, and wasted another six hours of work on setting up my computer, only to to be asked at the acronis forum "what did you select under advanced options for “Backup Splitting”. WHAT??? There are dozens of advanced options for creating a backup. I DON"T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ANY OF THESE QUITE FRANKLY. I may or may not learn all the complex stuff later. Cant I just mirror my drive?
Please forgive the shouting. I’m at my wits’ end. I’m looking at many more potential screw ups along the learning curve in this complex program JUST TO DO THE SIMPLEST OF TASKS!
Why, Oh Why, can’t I just burn an image of my “C:” drive, without having to navigate options in a program suited for advanced users who wish to play with all the bells and whistles and myriad flavors of disc recovery methods? I just want one “method”. The simplest one (for XP… I don’t have Vista or 7) Just a snapshot of my EXACT drive with no tweaks or changes. Is this possible?
Please help me. I’m going a bit nutty over this since it ought intuitively to be so damn simple but is just somehow beyond my grasp.
Or be so kind as to recommend a more suitable forum for asking this.