Yes, I am aware of the Vista backup, but that is not sufficient if (as I
have experienced) the entire harddisk is destroyed and must be replaced.
In that case the "normal" procedure seems to be that you take the original
system recovery CD that came with your machine and re-install the system.
Yhen you have to go through all the updates that have occurred for that
system and you have to reconfigure your system, And now at last can you get
your machine back to life with your applications backup.

What I am looking for is some means to create a "system recovery CD" which
when used will immediately restore (or create) my system according to the
state at the time I created that CD, which of course will be whenever I know
that there has been a substantial change to my system from last time I did
this job.

Then I shall be happy to use Vista backup for my applications.

On my last XP-machine I have used Ghost to create an image of the harddisk
at regular intervals. When I recently had a complete harddisk failure I
tried to boot from this image. The boot process proceeded until I had the
Windows XP logo displayed on the screen but I never got the user logos so I
was unable to log on to the system. I suspect this had to do with the fact
that the boot was from the image disk on E: and that the image included some
(critical) references to C: which of course at that time was empty.

regards Sven

"Huib" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:4826a35f$0$2950$ba620e4c@news.skynet.be...[color=blue]
> Hi,
> I am using the Vista back-up one and it is working very good.
> You can get it via confiuration screen / back-up centrum or via
> computer/right mouse click on the disk / requirements and tab Extra
> It is correct, the first time it makes and full back-up on the medium you
> choose (it do it on and external HDD), the other times it is and
> incremental back-up.
> Restoring maps our looking for individual files works perfect so i don't
> see why to use third party SW which are creating only risks to make your
> system unstable.
> The only problem is once you choose and other medium our time its starts
> all over again with a full back-up.
> When i perform a back-up on a DVD (only 6 monthly) and switch than back to
> the HDD it is starting againg with a full back-up, with third party SW -
> you can make your choose of couse...
> You can als take a fix day to start automatically a back (incremental) ...
>
> Success
> Huib
>
> "Sven Pran" <no.direct@mail.please> schreef in bericht
> news:edo3v3ssIHA.3716@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...[color=green]
>>I am looking for a means to create system backup of my Vista Home premium
>>version in case I shall ever have to reinstall the system, for instance on
>>a new harddisk.
>>
>> The backup help on my system tells me that the tool for this task is a
>> "PC Complete backup", but also that this is not available on Vista home
>> versions.
>>
>> Apparently this system backup must be burned on a CD (or DVD), but where
>> can I find a utility that does just that?
>>
>> regards Sven[/color]
>[/color]