Tips for factory restore

[Trolle]

Plan on doing some spring cleaning and do a factory restore.

Anyone have any advice or tips?

X60, XP, ultrabase, Atheros wireless

[j-dawg]

Don't plan on using your computer for a while. The factory restore takes hours to complete, and most of it is automated setup scripts.

Also, if you're using the backup partition, try to do a custom restore and disable things you don't want, like Norton.

Nobody wants Norton.

[Trekk69]

Concurred, it takes a while. But what I learned was that after I do my factory reinstall, take a few hours and customize the system the way you want it. I mean, like installing Word, or other programs and such, get the system all ready. And than do an image backup, this way when you want to 'spring clean' again, you can restore it back to this created state with everything all ready to go again without having the hassle of installing all your software again.

Hope it helps

[Trolle]

Trekk69 that sounds like an excellent idea. How do I go about doing an image backup?

[Trekk69]

I just used the Thinkvantage software, I believe it was under "Back up the contents of my hard drive", or "take an image of my current hard drive"
Something like that I think.

[j-dawg]

If you've got Vista Business you can do a "Complete PC Backup."