Just bought a laptop and I want to make a copy of the windows 7 home premium thats installed

[madokie]

how do I do that

[TexasTowelie]

1. I'm not an expert in this area,

but it may be illegal to do that. I imagine that somebody else will be able to refute or confirm my suspicion.

Normally you would have to a recovery disk if Windows 7 failed. You might want to check the disks that came with the laptop to see if a recovery disk is included.

Here is an article that seems pertinent to the discussion:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248995/how_to_install_windows_7_without_the_disc.html

[Warren Stupidity]

4. You can make backups. It is done all the time and is perfectly legal.

Win7 has backup software built in, it isn't a "full image" backup, you make a "recovery disk" and then a backup of your files and programs, and then you can restore your entire system from the combination. Third parties sell full image backup programs. All of this is legal. What you can't do is run multiple copies without paying for that many licenses. Also OEM versions are licensed to the system manufacturers platform, so you can't move your dell version to an hp.

[hobbit709]

2. If it didn't come with an actual install disk, that would be difficult.

If it has the recovery disk creation option, that will make a set of disks that lets you reinstall, but it will come with all the crapware that came on the original out of the box setup since the the recovery disks are an image of the disk as it came out of the box.

What kind is it? You can use a Dell Win 7 recovery disk on most any computer that has a valid sticker as long as it's the same version of 7-Home Premium, Pro, 32 or 64 bit.

you can get them here
http://www.softwaresupplygroup.com/microsoft-windows-7.html

I've never had one of the Dell branded ones with the sticker fail to authenticate on a clean build. I have restored 7 on several computers that had 7 on them by using the Dell disk and the product key on the machine.

[Pab Sungenis]

3. Microsoft has disk images online

that you can legally download and burn to DVD or thumb drive. Microsoft no longer cares about protecting the medium since it can control reinstalls through activation.

Make sure you keep a copy of your activation key in a safe place, too.

[Go Vols]

9. This ^^^^

[gvstn]

5. Macrium Reflect

Macrium Reflect free version will make an image of your whole HD or just your Windows partition. The image can be reloaded if you run into trouble.

You probably have 2 or 3 partitions on your notebook. One recovery partition that could be 8-16gb, one system reserved partition that is only a few hundred mb and your Windows partition. I would go to Disk Management to see what you have to get some information. Go to Start and type in disk management into the Search box and hit enter. Look at the graph section to see your HD layout (should be disk 0 ). You'll have to look at the top panel and do some math to figure out how much space is actually being used by each partition. The Windows partition image can be greatly compressed to about 5gb but the recovery partition is probably already compressed so it would probably need the same amount of space as it is currently using. Basically, you are figuring out how much space you need for your backup (you want to keep it on an external HD or flash drive). You could also just install Macrium Reflect to get this information without the math as it shows available and used space.

My personal preference if you have an external HD would be to image the whole notebook HD at about 40gb. If you don't have an external and want to use a flash drive then you might be able to get away with an 8gb flash drive to image just the Windows and System Reserved partitions. Whichever you choose you can just use Macrium to make an image file onto the laptop HD to see the actual size and then get something external to store it and copy it over to the external when you get the chance. You really should get a blank CD too, so that you can burn the Macrium recovery disc so that it is available to boot the computer and restore your image if your notebook fails to start.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/macrium_reflect_free_edition.html Read the Limitations at the end of the post. Apparently, they have changed the installer but you want the free edition.

[madokie]

6. Thank you

This is what I was looking for.
I'm going to put linux on it but I would like to have the windows option to put it back on if I ever wanted to sell it and the person I was to sell it to wanted windows. I bought it used. This laptop will be used by my wife and she is used to using my ubuntu machine and its been so long since I ran windows that it would be easier for me to just put ubuntu on it and go. I've already checked and ubuntu has no problems with anything on the laptop to cause me any head aches. I know when I first switched to linux on my old 2001 Dell it was like I had a new computer. The speed of it and all. I thank you again

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

7. I cheated when we got a HP Laptop with Vista.. I went to Newegg and bought a second hard drive

I pulled the Vista drive and put in new one and installed Linux...when ever I wanted (or needed) to use Windows, I just switch drives back.

I do thia all the time on my Desktop Computer, every OS has its own hard drive.

[madokie]

8. Thats a good idea

my neighbor does that. He has a bay that he can switch out the hard drive in real easy