In .213,
Boris typed on Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:16:26 +0000 (UTC):
I'll make an image of the drive once I get all of my apps installed,
but I'm not sure if I can re-image the hard drive with the ability to
boot from the CD-ROM.

Thanks for the tip.

It sure is interesting your CD drive won't boot, Boris. But some imaging
programs will either create a bootable CD or USB flash drive for a
recovery option. And the ones that doesn't allow for an USB option,
there are tools that will make them be anyway for free.

The next hurdle would be whether this machine can boot from USB? Your
problem is common among netbook users and they can use flash drives
instead of CD/DVD for booting. Most recent computers can do this too. So
there is hope here.

If everything else fails, there is still one standby trick that will
always work regardless what this computer will or will not allow you to
do. That is to make use of dual-booting. It can be an OS really small,
but gets the job done like BartPE. Or a lite version of Windows 98,
Windows 2000/XP or something. As something that your imaging program can
run under.

Say another thought is a lot of imaging software can restore the
partition it is running from. Both Paragon and Acronis True Image both
does this. Both have free versions too. The only catch of course is if
it becomes unbootable for whatever reason. In that case you need to
install some OS that the imaging program will run under. Then restore
and the original will be recovered that way.

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2