Tip & How To about PC Desktops

Always save a basic drive image to Optical media ie:> DVD-ROM you will thank me

Posted by Owen Stephen Dawson on Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Most New Laptops will come with a Factory Default image that will be hidden but can be accessed during the Boot stage by pressing a certain key combination like ALT + F10 or CTRL + F10 of it will have a firmware software like PC Angel LE like on the Evesham Laptops which will revert your Laptop back to how you bought it.

With Desktops this is not always the case and to prevent almost a days work fulling installing your PC back to a basic setting it is a good idea to create a drive image with the DOS and the latest service packs; plus latest hotfixes; microsoft office; printer drivers; web browsers + addons; Java; Flash and Shockwave, (you can go on forever well upto 4.2GB anyway)

These will easily fit on a single DVD-ROM (4.7GB) optical disc I suggest that you use Norton Ghost v14.0 it will take about 20mins to create and about the same to reload your PC with the image.

You will of course require a DVD Burner either ATAPI or USB if you use Norton Ghost you can also undertake a pre-boot Antivirus scan, I have created this script to allow you to create an uptodate Virus Defintions CD

http://rapidshare.com/files/312247455/getdefs4ghost_iso_burn.zip

Heres how it works unxzip the archive to your C: drive then run the getdefs32.bat first then put a CD-RW into your drive then run makecd4defs32.bat this will create an ISO then burn then latest Defintions to your CD use this by browsing for you D: drive after you have booted with your Ghost v12.0 or v14.0 boot CD and selected the antivirus scan option.

I created this as I got fed up of installing NAV2008 onto my PC while I was running McAfee from Sky just to update my Ghost v12.0 CD.

Hope you all like it .....join me at the www.windowstipsclub.co.uk on facebook for more of the same.

P.S You might have to run scanbusit.bat the mkisofs.bat is set to 1.0.0 you might need to change the line in the makecd4defs32.bat to asuit your system setup.

cdrecord speed=0 -dev=1,0,0 -dao -v VirusDef.iso

Shown here is the result for my system my Philips DVD burner is located at scsibus1 so my dev=1,0,0 this will need changing ONLY ONCE if your ISO will not burn as it can't find the drive.