Hi all, recently i had a bad virus which i could not remove, so what i did was ; My computer is built by Mesh with a partition on the drive, when it boots after the page with the F8 option the next page has an F10 option which if you press at start up you can take the computer back to the factory settings, i did this which works fine but all the settings and programs are as if the computer is brand new I.E. you have update all your drivers reinstall all your loved programs etc etc. What i would like to know is can i take a copy of my computer as it is now and burn it to a disc , then if i have to restore to factory settings again can i then insert the disc and get my computer back to how it is now.
I hope this makes sense, thanks inadvance for any help, Richard...

Nero has a very good back up feature, however, it is a commercial software.

There is lots of software that will do this. Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, and Paragon something(not sure what their program is called). None of these programs are free though.

As a newbie could you advise on what is good and gets the job done, also are there any freeware programs to use, thanks,,,

I'D Recommend Norton Ghost,

But I did come across this freeware which I haven't tried yet (though you need a spare larger hard drive):

Personally I wouldn't rely on something untested/uncommercial for such a job because at least with something like ghost you know that it is more likely to work then not. I don't really like this type of software though. I would rather just make sure I have hard copies of all my data instead.(then you don't have to worry about the images becoming corrupt or the software failing ect ect.

Thanks for your input guys, i think what rridgely says makes sense, so i will go with norton or Acronis. Once again thanks for your help, regards Richard...