Monday, December 6, 2010

Restore your Windows: Create an Image

 

There are many alternatives available on how to repair or reinstall your Windows after any severe happening like system crash, hijack, or a virus attack, etc. One of the alternatives is to create a system image, and restore your Windows from it. Windows 7 has a in-built tool to create one for you, so there is no need of any external software.

What is a system image? Well, the answer is simple. Any instance of single or multiple drives of your computer is captures and saved, and that becomes a system image. The image is nothing but a replica of your system drives’ contents which were present on your system when the image was being created.
This image is of large size, considering the size of all the contents on the drive whose image has been created.

How can a system image help? When your system is severely troubled like got crashed, affected by virus/ worms, or even is unable to boot, you can use this system image to restore your Windows to earlier settings. These settings are nothing but the state of your computer when the system image was generated.

Where to save this image? You can save this image on any drive of the same computer, or any external hard drive, flash drive, or even network drive, whose free size must be equal or greater than the size of the system image. However, take note of that if you save the system image only on the drive of same computer, then it may not be retrieved in case any problem cripples down the computer. So, it’s advisable to use an external drive or network drive.

How to create a system image? We are providing you a detailed instruction set with the help of screenshots on how to create a system image with the help of in-built facility provided with Windows 7.
1. Go to Control Panel→System and Security→Back up your computer.

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2. Click on “Create a system image”.
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3. Now, select a location to save the system image. Take note of the size constraints, and read the information carefully.
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4. Select the drives to back up now.
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5. Confirm your selection. Take a note of the size required. Click on “Start Backup”.
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6. Here, you can see Windows preparing for, performing and saving the backup of selected drives on desired location.
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You can find the backup easily by navigating to the location.

Important Points:
1. It is advisable that you create a system image of your computer as soon as you install a fresh version of Windows along with other important drivers, and before installing any other program, so as to limit the size of the system image. A small size will be much more convenient to transfer.
2. Save the system image on some other drive. If possible, create copies and store on multiple devices, as on failure of one device, you can look forward to another device.
3. The backup restores a fresh (adhering to the guidelines mentioned above) Windows up and running. Any external software or program or documents, you might have to redo your work.