My trusty Acer TravelMate 4020 gets its O/S reinstalled.

[Bryn]

Due entirely to my own carelessness when shifting and resizing its internal hard drive's partitions, I have had to re-install the default Windows XP O/S on my workhorse laptop. It's going to take ages getting it up to date and re-installing all the software. Thank goodness I have other, newer, laptops to cover while my 4020 with its much more friendly keyboard layout (long left hand shift key, for instance) back up to scratch.

[Stephen Smith]

I'm not a techie,but I noticed a tip on another forum. There are various imaging tools (I use Acronis at the moment) - the tip is to tale an image once you have set up your new OS, any service pack updates and installed programs, before you install your data folders.

I'm just commissioning a new PC and intend to do this. I trust the logic is that I will backup my data files regularly. In the event of a failure (or after a chronic slowing down over the years) I can just re-install the original OS image, add any updates, then my data and have a fresh system to use. By all means point out any flaws in this train of thought......

(I have also used the Windows 7 image backup on my daiughters laptop - I wonder if it overides the previous image as her 2nd complete backup image seemed to delete the 1st? - If using W7 backup I'd either check that out,or store my first "fresh" image on a different exterior Hard Disk.