Wrong or missing program icons

mickey megabyte said:

do you remember which program mucked things up in the first place?

i'll stick it on my 'avoid at all costs' list.

lol I installed an older version of iTunes (temporarily, version 10.4.1 x64) so I could downgrade iOS on my iPod Touch.

hehe - itunes is already on my 'avoid at all costs' list

by the way did you see my edit to my previous post?

No but that's a good idea, I'll definitely do that and back it up to my external hard drive.

So I just finished my clean install today :)!

Everything is working perfectly. I created an image with Macrium after I installed drivers/updates, and then another image after I installed my programs and configured everything.

But, I may have made a mistake with the first image. I noticed that Win7 created a 100MB "system reserved" partition. In Macrium, when I created my first image, I only selected the C: drive, not the reserved partition.

Will this image still work?

yes it will, so long as nothing happens to your system reserved partition.

if you want to be real belts-and-braces careful, re-image and include the 100MB partition.

mickey megabyte said:

yes it will, so long as nothing happens to your system reserved partition.

if you want to be real belts-and-braces careful, re-image and include the 100MB partition.

Well I can't exactly re-image with only updates/drivers when I've already installed my programs .....

But it's good to know that it'll work.....thanks for the help.

why not re-image? you'll get back what you have now. i've got multiple images at various stages.

if you're feeling really geeky (and have the time), you can re-image what you have now - let's call it image B (including the sys-reserved partition).

then load up your fresh install image - let's call that A.

make a new image including A and the system partition - let's call that C. (or A+ )

once you have image C safely stored away, you can re-restore image B and get back to where you are now.

it will also give you an idea of how to restore, so you know and trust the procedure.

NEVER trust an imaging program until you know how to restore from it!

that way, if you ever find yourself in a my-system-has-died-and-it-won't-boot-OMG! panic situation, you can restore in full confidence that it will work.

That does sound like a good idea. I'll try and find time to do it this weekend :).

Ok, so I tried to restore to the first image I made (clean install with only drivers/updates installed).

I created a Linux restore CD, and attempted to restore the image. I had to copy the files to my external hard drive in order to restore them.

Unfortunately....verification for the image failed . I tried restoring it anyway, then thought it was a bad idea and canceled it. However, I rebooted my computer, and Windows wouldn't load. It went into startup repair and couldn't repair the boot.

But......I had created an image with all my programs installed. I was able to successfully restore this image, and am running on a functional Windows:)!

I won't be able to get an image with no programs, but at least I have one that works......

it's a lot easier than installing and updating everything again.

hope it wan't too much bother and you learned something on the way...:)