image my satellite pro a120

with work and the constant changing/installing/removing and fiddling that goes on i have to rebuild my laptop every 6 months.

This is a pain and takes a few days to get right due to network management software etc that has to have my account re-set at the supplier and re-enabled for use at re-install time.

i was given a choice of any tosh or dell upto a certain value and when i chose, i got this cr*p, not the dell i actually asked for.

However i cannot ghost this laptop. I've even tried booting from a bart pe builder cd image which has worked in all other cases, but with the tosh it comes back unable to read the disk.

is there anyway around this? as a ghost image will mean 2 hours to rebuild my laptop rather than 2days.

any help is much appreciated.

 

Very strange, try clonezilla live: http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/ Not as intuitive as Ghost, but would give you the same result.

Another way to look at this problem would be to use a virtualizer such as Altiris SVS. That creates a virtual 'operating layer' that programs can use. Instead of installing and removing the programs in your actual file system, you can just install them into a virtual layer, then just remove the layer when you are done. Gives you the advantages of using a virtual machine without the performance loss. here is a good article that explains it: http://lifehacker.com/software/installation/hack-attack-safely-install-software-in-a-virtual-layer-162910.php

Good luck!