>>Hi,
>>
>>If you saw my threads attempting to recover PC from a major issue, I wanted to let you know how I recovered it (just in case someone has a similar problem).
>>
>>The problem started when I un-installed Avast using their own utility Avastclear.exe (downloaded from avast site). The instructions on Avast site were to start PC in Safe mode and run this utility. Exactly what I did. But this un-install wiped out almost everything. After I restarted, networking would not work, Office would not work, SQL Server, almost nothing. System Recover would no work. All there programs were showing errors that would no allow me to get to anything.
>>
>>I restarted PC with F8 option. Dell has a choice (above Safe mode) which is called REPAIR THIS COMPUTER. When I selected this choices it showed a bunch of choices. One of the choices I noticed was to "Restore to a certain point" (don't remember exactly the words). I chose it. Since this DELL utility starts before Widows it found a Restore Point of 5-11-2015. I clicked on it and after some time the system was restored to this date. Everything so far appearing to be working.
>>Since I keep my data on a separate partition (D: instead of C:) none of the data was lost.
>>
>>I will start making these Restore Points every week now.
>
>Good to know that an OEM add-on is actually useful! Glad to hear you got your system back.
>
>Windows 7 Backup and Restore has an image backup capability: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/back-up-programs-system-settings-files#1TC=windows-7
>
>If you use this utility to create image backups, you should also run the "Create a system repair disc" option once. This creates a bootable medium. In case of disaster e.g. total hard drive failure, you can replace the hard drive, boot from the system repair medium, and then restore an image from your image backups.
>
>Some third-party programs such as Acronis have some nice additional features but for simple image backups the built-in Windows utility works fine.

Yes, I was very pleased with DELL that they have this utility to look for a restore point.

I will try to create a Windows image, as per URL you provided. And will create a system repair disk.

As far as Acronis, I did try it years ago and could not make it work. But it could have been just something I misunderstood.

Thank you.