New laptop - image it before activation or after?

I'm expecting a new laptop. It comes with Vista Business and drivers but no recover disc. In any case I expect to either replace the Vista with XP or at the very least to majorly tweak it.

So I need to create some sort of recover-to-factory-state capability, for me as a backup and also to send back for repair if needed.

I was thinking I should just clone the HDD and save that, or make a Ghost image.

BUT when shouuld I do this. I was thinging to do it after activation, but just want to make sure.

Also if there is abetter way to do this, to get a recover image that I can just toss in a DVD and be done, please tell. Thanks.

 

It varies depending on the company and laptop you are getting whether or not you can simply pop a DVD in and make recovery DVDs.

 

Does it come with a recovery partition? If you aren't getting a recovery disc, chances are it will have a recovery partition.

If not, i would make an image out of the gate. Nothing wrong with being able to recover it to its boxed state.

After you get things running the way you "like it" i would image it again. This gives you an option to restore it to factory, and to how you like it.

Edit: Image both i meant to say.

 

I had a look and it has arecovery partition. What does this mean. bear in mind I do not plan to use the factory HDD, I am taking that out and replacing with a larger HDD I bought.

So what do i do with this recovery partition. How do I know what is in there, how to use it and how to copy it?

 

Typically speaking, OEM laptops ship with a recovery partition, with recovery software built in. When you boot from disc, there is an option to restore/recover, it would most likely be found there, gotta be honest though i've never used recovery partitions.

As to what's on there, it should restore your laptop to how it was "out of box".

 

I tried the recovery partition, (by hitting F8 during the boot-up process, after Bios and before windows boot). I do get a Vista restore/repair screen. That is the good news. The bad news is that it is in Japanese (its a Japan import laptop with English Vista).

So that is useless to me, unfortunately. Any other specific ideas for how I can clone the new Vista install onto another HDD?

 

Make an image of the original OS partition, then restore that image on the new drive. After you transfer the image, you may have to edit boot.ini and change the partition(#) section to match your new drive. For example, on my Dell there was a hidden partition in front of the C: partition. When I transferred the partition image to a new hard drive, I had to edit boot.ini to change partition(2) to partition(1). If you don't, you'll get a "HAL.dll" error during the boot process.

The easiest and cheapest way to make the image is to get a flash drive and install BartPE on it. BartPE comes with Drive Snapshot (you may have to download a new copy as the trial on the included file may have already expired) that you can use to make an image of whatever partitions you want.