My First Successful Experience And How To Develop My Skills...

[lostinisaan]

Sawasdee khrap,

Okay, a little bit about myself. Had the opportunity to learn a lot about hard and software through learning by doing, as my first PC in Thailand always needed a new XP about 10 years ago.

That happened almost every month, so I took the PC to the shop, but finally understood that I had to watch what they did to understand more about it.

Then I'd always tried new programs, and developed a good functioning understanding of soft and hardware. I could do almost all, but was always scared to pit whole new system programs on.

My first experience was an older PC with 2 GB of RAM, having XP on it at our school. The hard drive died, but I was aware of it. Had already made the suggestion to buy a new computer, as it always had problems from the beginning.

Then last week, I had plenty of time, as the kids had to write their tests. So i took the hard drive out, wow still warranty on the sticker. Off to the computer shop, where it was bought.

They made their tests but couldn't read English, so I just told the guy to press 3. Okay, hard drive was bad, so we went to the manager. He started to let me know that I'd have it back in about one month.

But not with me, so I had to tell him that the school would need that thing by today. Okay, the guy gave me a second hand one, a woman wrote all date on a sheet and went back to school.

I was surprised as there's still an XP program on it, that even worked with this motherboard, etc...but then I was fed up with the missing drivers, no internet through the missing driver of the wireless card, etc..

Okay, took my Windows 7 installation DVD, inserted it and i couldn't do anything. Showed me that it wouldn't run. but then it did.

Took me only an hour and I had many other programs on. It's genuine now, updates work perfect and the machine is fast as a race horse.

here's my question: Should I just burn another DVD with all the other needed programs on like office 2010, all the players, Burning CD software,etc..

Would be great if the installation of all the other programs would happen automatically, without installing one after the other programs.

Any idea how to make that more proficient would be deeply appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[NeverSure]

What you have won't fit on a DVD. You'll need another HDD.

If you are talking about a future re-install on the same computer, use Windows Backup (Google) onto the second drive and make a rescue disk (Google) Then you always have an image of everything you have on your computer including all programs (and files if you wait until they are on there.)

When I first do a fresh install on a new computer and get all of the settings the way I want, and add all of the programs I use, I immediately use Windows Backup to make an image. It takes 20 - 30 minutes to restore to what you had if you need it.

I also run Windows backup on another partition every night automatically so that if I screw something up, I can do a full restore to the night before.

NOW IF you are talking about doing an install including all of your favorite programs including Office and all, but later using it on a different computer which will need a different product key to validate, then you need to Sysprep the drive before you make the image using something like Acronis True Image. Sysprep strips the fresh installation of all its unique identifiers like the location, product key, hardware profile, SSID, user name, etc. Then when that image is put on a new computer, those items are freshly generated by you or the computer. That also takes about 20 minutes to do the full install, or 10 minutes if you don't have any programs other than Windows on it.

Google Sysprep for instructions. It's used by large enterprises that need to push the installation to multiple machines all at once but you can use it too.

[JSixpack]

NOW IF you are talking about doing an install including all of your favorite programs including Office and all, but later using it on a different computer which will need a different product key to validate, then you need to Sysprep the drive before you make the image using something like Acronis True Image.

Out of date. Sysprep is no longer needed as now the (paid versions of) imaging programs--Acronis, Paragon, Macrium, Easus--all have "restore to different hardware" functionality. Much more convenient, newbie friendly, and work well. Why fool around?

[Chicog]

Because it's free?

Although maybe Paragon would be an easier solution, free for personal use.