Sat Nov 02, 2019 11:01 am
One other approach would be to create an entire image of the disc using a somewhat hidden feature.
Go to settings, choose "update and security", then choose "backup".
In the backup screen, under "Looking for an older backup", click on |Go to Backup and Restore Windows 7)"
On the left hand side click on "create system image". If you plug an external hard drive into a USB port, it will then create an image of your entire hard drive, including the complete operating system. If you have multiple partitions it will give you the option of selecting which ones you want to image.
This could take some hours depending on the quantity of data, the speed of the external hard drive, and the speed of the USB interface. When complete, it will ask if you want to create a system repair disc. Normally this is done using a CD writer. If you don't have an internal drive, then you would have to connect an external CD writer. Failing this, there are other web articles that show how to create a system repair disc equivalent on a USB stick.
The system repair disc is only necessary if your computer won't boot into Windows at all.
The advantage of this approach is that absolutely everything would be imaged, so restoring the image should bring back all applications with their associated settings and registry entries, and all data files. It's brute force, but complete. As noted previously, you should create a new image whenever there have been significant windows updates.
Note that if you just reinstall an operating system from scratch, you will lose all installed applications. While you could restore data files from a backup, you would still have to re-install the applications. This is why a complete system image is so attractive.
Ray