Making a Backup Disk

[rod]

We use "Ghost Image" at work. We re-image our hard drives all the time and Ghost works pretty good.

[Corbin Dallas]

Yep, it's a Windows XP Home Edition SP3 Recovery OS Disc complete with the "all of this software is already installed on your computer" BS. Maybe only Dell does it now? Admittedly, most of the laptops I own are Dells.

Hell, I'd give you XP SP3 for free too...

[Toma]

Eh, it could be worse; at least the damn thing boots in a jiffy.

[Rob454]

It supposed to come with the OS disc, at least. Either give the computer back or raise hell until you get one. You paid for the license to use an MS product, so they'd better give you a copy of said software.

you are wrong dude. i jsut bought a brand new laptop and they do not come with discs anymore. You simply burn your own from the computer
Rob

[jmlivingston]

Some manufacturers still provide the disc's with their systems, but you have to specify it when you order. Otherwise it's generally burn your own, in fact I know that Gateways used to come with the blank discs for doing so.

John

[kpw001]

All depends on the manufacturer. As stated above, more than likely you have a hidden partition with recovery software. When I bought my Dell laptop last year I had the option to add physical media for a couple bucks more.

Also look into extracting the files onto a flash drive, makes installs much faster if you can. Most computers now can boot from a usb device. Only takes me about 15 minutes to complete a clean install of Win7 from a flash drive.