Sorry for being a noob but how does one make an image.
You could use the built-in tools in Windows, but most would tell you to use a free downloadable program such as Macrium Reflect Free Edition.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html
Above is a tutorial on how how to use it.
Briefly:
When your PC is in good shape and running well, you use Macrium to make an "image" file of the C partition and the System Reserved partition if you have one. You store that image file on some other partition--such as an external drive or a separate internal hard drive. The image file is a compressed representation of the partition you imaged as of that moment----EXACT, byte for byte. Including everything on that partition--installed programs, Windows, licensing information, and pictures of your cat if they were on C.
If your C partition has a bunch of errors or is corrupted in some way, an image file of it in that state will also contain the errors and corruption. That's why you make image files when things are going well and you don't have any problems. No point in restoring a corrupted Windows.
You also burn a "recovery" CD within Macrium, using Macrium's menus. You have a choice of "Linux" based or "WinPE" based. Choose WinPE because that method is more likely to boot your PC properly.
When things go bad, you use the recovery CD to boot your PC.
When you are booted from the WinPE recovery CD, you will land in the Macrium interface and you use it to "restore" that image file you made previously. You can restore to your original C partition or to a brand new drive. You navigate to that image file and choose it within the Macrium interface.
If it works as advertised, you can then boot again from your hard drive and your C partition will be in the same state it was in on the day you made the image file.
It's not 100 percent reliable, but still high--probably 98%. If it doesn't work, your other choice is to do a clean install.
The advantage of image restoration is that it is quick and saves you a lot of time and trouble. The only disadvantages are that it is not 100 percent reliable and that it restores you only to the date of the image file--not to 10 minutes ago. So you should make a new image file fairly often.
Normally, you'd make a new image file perhaps once a month and you'd probably restore the most recent one you had.
The image files are fairly large--roughly half the size of the occupied space on C. You just store them on another drive like any other valuable file. Macrium image files will have an MRG extension.
The image file is of little use UNLESS it is "restored", so you have to know for sure that you can in fact boot from that recovery disk. Test it after you make it.
