another good idea would be to use Norton Ghost and back up your entire HHD onto another hhd if you don't want to restore using a image disk.
Still provides you with the same problem, old software, old drivers, etc. You can create a backup before you install drivers, than you will just have to install windows updates.
I have a pretty genius way of doing drive imaging that I developed at work. Using ghost, I made the images. I burned freedos, ghost and the ghost image all onto a single DVD. Boot off the DVD and it automatically loads into ghost, and you press enter a few times and BAM imaged windows.
I could provide the instructions how to do this, however I cannot provide the ghost executable as you need to buy that.
Creating a bootable ghost DVD for imaging computers
Written by: Chris Mayhew, 2007-08-27
Written for: Population Health
For this guide, you should have a few items ready.
-A copy of the DOS ghost 8.3 version.
-A copy of freedos (I use the FDOEMCD.builder.zip)
http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/ISO/FDOEMCD.builder.zip
-Ghost format image of the computer you want to clone
-Working DVD burner & DVD with any ISO burning program
This tutorial does not cover making a ghost image, as readers of this should likely already know how to create one. This method will also work with SATA DVD drives and SATA Hard Drives. First step I do is in the folder FDOEMCD\CDROOT\isolinux I edit the file isolinux.cfg. I change the line “ontimeout hd†to “ontimeout BootCDâ€. I also change the “timeout 150†to “timeout 30†to give me a three second timeout.
Second step is in FDOEMCD\CDROOT in autorun.bat I add “ghost.exe†into this folder, as well as the ghost images.
The next and final step to create the ISO is to run the makeiso.bat file in the main directory. This script CANNOT be run from a UNC path (\\server\files\makeiso.bat) but must be ran from a local path (z:\files\makeiso.bat). This leaves you with an ISO called FDOEM.ISO and you can now burn this with your favourite burning program.
