Software to burn complete "Restore Point" onto DVD

You're completely right. Now that I think about it, I remember it was copying content from D:\, which was a little weird considering there's only one physical drive in the computer. Makes sense now.

But I'm still looking for a program to do a backup of my computer once I do an install of all my basic programs. The first few days of re-customization are always the worst.

other than Ghost or some such it won't happen. When you install Office or any other program it puts files in Windows as well in Program files. No way to do a recovery of your original set up and then simply add a few DVDs to the mix.

As Alan indicated, you did not create either a ''restore point'' or a copy of your C drive, but rather a ''restore disk.''

The two major programs for creating an image of everything on a drive, which is what you seem to be asking for, are Norton Ghost from Symantec and True Image from Acronis. Although I have only used Ghost, Ihave heard True Image is as good or better.

These do not create a ''restore point'' in the sense that the term is used in Windows, but create an image of the disk such that you can recreate a functionally exact copy of the disk as it exists at the time. This has some advantages over a restore point, and some disadvantages. You must remember that in restoring an image, everything changed after the image creation is lost. Therefore, you need backups of data files (you should have these in any case) so you can replace them, and all updates and programs added after the imaging must be reinstalled.

Both of these programs have other functions, from imaging and /or restoring only portions of the disk contents, to creating an exact, sector-by-sector clone of the disk. However, the imaging is the most important and commonly used feature.

Hope this helps

Frank

Thank you, that was a much better answer than I thought I could even get from posting here.

I am indeed trying to create a whole image, something that I would use to create a clean install with, something I would use after a reformat.

I was looking for a way to not just reinstall windows after a reformat, but to reinstall my entire customized environment (I've already spent 5+ hours getting rid of all the bundled crap Gateway threw onto my machine). Sorry if my terminology was off, but your answer cleared that up. I have a copy of Norton Systemworks 2005 Premier, which has Ghost on it, so I'm set.

As already mentioned, do the Ghost just before doing your "restore" operation to keep all you have on the hard drive. You still want to have your Recovery DVDs available on the off chance you ever need them, but for what you want a Ghost image is possibly better. The only problem with Ghost is that if you have a virus/Trojan, etc causing woes it will still be there after the Ghost operation. Good luck.