>Sounds like a pain to me to have to go and install all the backup software just because DELL can't make things easier. Might I suggest checking out GHOST by Norton. We have used it successfully for test machine setup for quite a while. It creates and image of the hard drive and you can put in on a CD. Then just startup a computer with a floppy and you can restore the system. Its good for going back to the "freshly installed" state. If you have working data you want to keep then the GoBack software is probably best.

We do use Ghost for fresh installs, and a fairly good product it is. As you say, if disaster is total, that's the best solution I know of. But we have many no-boot repair jobs that are tough due to tight security, everything like Safe Mode disabled. I used Winternals for a while to get in to a hosed machine (well, depending on how bad damage was, sometimes I got in). At least we could usually rescue the HD data that way, though it's a painful process, so discontinued it in favor of GoBack, which usually did the same job in about 1/100th of the time.

Just to be fair, GoBack, while much superior for this sort of recovery, has a little performance overhead - but not too bad, if set for a small-size and installed on faster machines with plenty diskspace.


>Good luck and have fun!

Thanks - Tracy gave me a promising steer that might help, anyway. I know what I'll be doing in the morning!