I have a Dell Inspiron 545MT and as you might know that there is a recovery partition that is available to reimage your computer. Well I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit English and I will be getting a new brand Inspiron 545MT that I bough soon. I would like to ask the following questions: I would like to create a system image on the first day I receive my new PC so that when I make the system image I can keep the system images in case of hard drive failure of if the recovery partition has been corrupted, I can restore windows just like how dell has your PC configured. So I plan to do this: 1. Click Start, Control Panal, System and Security, Backup and Restore and on the left panel, Click Create Sytem Image. 2. Choose the create the system image in a DVD because I don't have a Portable Hard drive. 3. Click next and then I see the confirm your backup settings. I see a message that the following drives will be backed up: Recovery and OS. Where recovery is the dell partition and OS is Windows. 4. I click start backup and the backup process starts. I see that Windows has took approximately and entire blank DVD to backup Recovery and prompts me to insert another DVD. I will do this until the process completes. I want to find out something; When I would like to reimage my computer using the backup that I have created: 1. How do restore the PC using the disks I have created? 2. Do I insert the 1st DVD that has the recovery partition or start from the 2nd DVD? Please help me!

I know you probably don't want to hear this but Dell is solely responsible for any and all support for Windows 7 pre-installed on their products. Dell customizes their installation and a general answer that would work on Retail versions of Win 7 might not work on customized OEM versions. Part of Dell's customization is recovery partitions(s), some of which are hidden and not accessible in the same manner as you would expect with the Retail version of Win 7. You need to contact Dell Tech Support or go to the Dell Support Forums for answers on what Dell does to their installations.

omg.

Rick is correct. Since the OEM system is customized by Dell, you should involve Dell to answer the above questions. If the system is a retail version, there is only one Installation disc. Also, I would like to enclose the following article to restore a system image. Restore your computer from a system image backup Regards, Novak