As of January 2007, I decided to have a change and moved in to IBM's Pre-Sales Technical Support group, supporting Sales with the technical aspects. This includes supporting Sales with technical enquiries and presenting to clients.
Even though, at work, my primary role is hardware and Sales support, I enjoy tinkering in all aspects of computing and have been involved in software support, programming and Website design.
One of the main things I get involved with, is friends whose PCs either don't work properly or in dire need of a reload. While I'm comfortable with fixing hardware issues, I don't find it worthwhile spending the time repairing PCs considering the way in which technology moves on as most people prefer to buy another PC .. obviously this depends on the problem.
So in many cases, I need to assist with backing up data, reloading the
OS and applications, then restoring data.
Once I've reloaded the PC, I normally recommend that an image is taken which
makes any future reloads so much simpler. Over the years, I've used numerous
applications to do this including Ghost, DriveImage Pro and currently, Acronis.
So far Acronis has proved the most reliable.
However before I can image a PC, I sometimes need to reload the OS and
applications. This is easy if the PC has OS boot media or a 'system partition'.
It's just a case of finding out how to restore the information.
If an OS boot CD has been supplied with the PC, it's a simple case of booting
the PC off the CD, reloading the OS, installing apps and then installing
patches, AV updates etc.
If the PC was supplied with no OS boot media, it may have an image or some
way of re-installing the OS hidden away in a 'system partition'.
Depending on the PC manufacturer, this system partition can be accessed
in a number of ways. Look out for a prompt just before the OS loads, sometimes
'Press F11' or a boot diskette may be required. If a manual was supplied
with the PC, check this for clues.
Whichever way the PC is reloaded, I always suggest taking your own image afterwards. The reason for this is that you can customise the PC to the way you like it, with your settings and applications installed, image it and then if you ever need to reload, you can use this image and your PC is back to the way you like it.
Over the years, I've found numerous ways to make mine and my friend's lives
easier. These include slipstreaming service packs and patches to older versions
of Windows installation media and creating custom media.
There are 'shed loads' of websites that detail these procedures.
Here are some links:
http://www.nliteos.com/
http://www.nu2.nu/