Back up a freshly baked and customized XP/VISTA operating system

Now that you have a new laptop or desktop, you'd probably spend the next 2-3 days installing all the mission critical applications, that you are used to, from the last PC that you'd been using.

MSN messenger, Winzip, Nero, PowerDVD, Firefox, Chrome, Java runtime, anti-virus programs, etc.

You'd probably also customize the appearance of the desktop such as the start up menu color, background picture and even a sound scheme that features your own voice....

Only after fully customizing it, you'd feel the PC is ready for use.
Then the fear of losing the 2-3 days of customization work sinks in.

What if the PC is infected with some serious spyware and virus and you have to reinstall everything all over again?

Recover botched Vista after cloning or resizing the partition!

Upgraded your hard-disk to a larger size and cloned your Vista OS over from the older hdd?

Doing that may cause the Vista OS to give you a "Winload.exe not found" error and you will not boot into Vista.


Before cursing yourself for buying the new HDD, there is a way to solve this problem.