How-To Geek

I have yet to even try Windows 8 - although I'm looking forward to doing so.

However, over on ghacks, Martin Brinkman has written an article providing a step-by-step procedure, along with some useful graphics, regarding how to create a system repair disk for Windows 8, which others here might find useful and informative.

"How to create a Windows 8 system repair disc

Windows 8 ships with options to create a system repair disc from within the operating system just like previous versions of Microsoft Windows did. What you need to know before you get started is that you can only create a system repair disc for the operating system version you are using. If you are running a 32-bit version, you can only create a disc that is compatible with 32-bit versions of the operating system.

The system repair disc can be used to boot into a recovery environment in situations where the Windows 8 operating system is not booting anymore."

Read the full article here:

http://www.ghacks.net/2012/11/.....pair-disc/

gedstar, that's the way to go. An image is a lot more convenient for a reinstallation than a recovery disc.

Just an update on my Windows 8 experience, last night got the my first BSOD, well it's actually different from the normal BSOD's you get with other Microsoft OS's, it's actually quite humorous, you get the blue screen with a SAD face and an error message, just put this down to a once off. Actually happened after a reboot. Well after rebooting Windows 8 again tonight got the dreaded BSOD again. Reboots and work fine again, but couldn't really depend on Windows 8 at the moment.
Not sure what is causing this, could be a driver incompatibility, although I did download the latest drivers for all my hardware and updated all my software.
Needless to say I re-imaged my PC back to Windows 7, Thank Buddha for the Image I created before installing Windows 8. I think the OS still contains some bugs that need to be ironed out, so will hang on until there's an SP1 out at least, never had any such issues with Windows 7 with the same PC.
Wonder if any other people have experienced these BSOD's in Windows 8 yet?

Hi Fhirkin9

What I did with Acronis 2011 was to create a bootable USB key from a Windows 7 PC and boot from that to create the image, it works fine that way. You can even verify the image after completion. I was able to create a Win8 Pro image that way without any issue.

Hi Fhirkin9

I already had a bootable USB key made when I had Acronis 2011 installed on my Windows 7 PC, basically there's an option in the software itself to create bootable media, you can either choose a CD or USB key as the media.
Once the bootable media is created you can then change the boot options to boot from which ever media you created. Hence no need to have it installed on Window 8, this way you are actually taking an image of the partition so Acronis doesn't really care what OS it's imaging.

Hope that makes sense.

P.S. Didn't even try to install on Windows 8 no need to

Thanks gedstar, I understand now. Sounds like Your USB setup works the same way as the Macrium solution. Glad I didn't toss the Acronis 2011 DVD when I was faced with the faulty install on Win8!

whs

Your disk would give me more confidence to use Linux Mint again since I could reimage if it goes up the Swanee! I can't fix Linux like I can Windows.

Will do when I do it. :)