"all their apps must be reinstalled"

Microsoft is doing a TIT or is that TIM.

Crazy! The reason I regularly make system images is so I don't have to reinstall all my "apps" if I have a major problem.

Reinstalling Windows may take an hour or so, reinstalling and reconfiguring all the applications takes days.

+1

Yes, very good idea, always. But in this case with Windows 8, what is the best way to do this and on what do you back it up?

Sorry for my ignorance.

Burt what do I do just back up everything to an external HD

And then create an emergency recovery disk to re-install all settings?

The reason I ask is that I have already gone too long without backing up this laptop which has all that I care about in this world. (almost)

I use Acronis True Image Home - just did one this morning for my desktop, to a different internal hard disk than the system disk.

For my laptop, I save the image to an external USB hard drive.

I use Acronis True Image Home - just did one this morning for my desktop, to a different internal hard disk than the system disk.

For my laptop, I save the image to an external USB hard drive.

That's also my backup of choice. They had a problem with failure to restore Windows 8 successfully a few months ago. Has that problem been fixed?

I find Windows 8 to be fast and very stable, then again the first thing I did was install Classic Shell. I suspect 8.1 will be a waste of time unless they are doing more than put the Desktop back.

I use Acronis True Image Home - just did one this morning for my desktop, to a different internal hard disk than the system disk.

For my laptop, I save the image to an external USB hard drive.

That's also my backup of choice. They had a problem with failure to restore Windows 8 successfully a few months ago. Has that problem been fixed?

Funny you should ask!

I am still on XP using Acronis 11 on a thumb drive, but I have been trying for about two months to get Acronis 2011 to work on a friend's Windows 7 (only one afternoon per week). We finally got it to work reliably last Sunday. The problem was in the Restore process: where to specify the partitions should go, and what characteristics to give the partitions, i.e. primary and/or active.

The odd thing was that the Windows partition (i.e. the C: drive) must not be set active, but the System Reserved partition (100 MB) must. That had me fooled for a long time.

Love the fact that Microsoft has chosen to 'codename' the upgrade, 'Blue'. In hospitals, a 'code blue' is when a patient is in need of resuscitation or other urgent live-saving attention. Just a coincidence?