Make a System Repair Disc today. It's simple -- click Start and then type "repair" in the search box. Then click Create a System Repair Disc. Insert a recordable CD or DVD and create a disc.

Figure C If the System Image Recovery procedure cannot locate a recent system image, you’ll see this warning message. Returning to our example, just click Next.

If that doesn’t work, Windows 7 users have another option: the Windows 7 System Repair Disc. To create it, in Windows 7, select Start, type system repair disc, press ENTER and follow the prompts.

On the next screen, click "create a system repair disk." The repair data is then copied to a blank CD or DVD disk. Put that disk in the laptop's CD or DVD drive and restart the PC.

A system backup is an disk image backup of all the partitions on your system drive. This includes several that are hidden, i.e., not enumerated as drive letters by the operating system.

In the case that something happens to your system, you can make yourself a system repair disc. Just search “system repair disc” in the start menu. You can get quicklaunch back by following ...