Robert wrote:Could you elaborate on that? E.g., by "native Backup" you mean the Windows-supplied Backup? and what is ERUNT? And what do you mean by "a barebones install"? How does one do that? And how do you bring back your whole system, including preferences and Registry settings? What I'm looking for is how to get back to the state *everything* was in before I would have reformatted.My method is different. I use native Backup + ERUNT, then I do a barebones install on the reformatted disk, just enough to get functionality from the Restore util, then I bring my whole old system back. It's super fast, and I can testify that it works.Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx