I have Vista Ultimate and I'm looking to do a reformat to overcome a number of issues with the system. Vista came on the machine when I bought it, so I don't have a disk to simply install it again. Unfortunately, I also didn't make a backup before installing software and saving documents... so, is there a way to backup only the operating system before a reformat, and then restore it afterwards without any documents or third party software?

This could be done, but not easily because there are 10s of thousand of files involved with the OS and knowing which ones would be nearly impossible.

But the greater concern is the problems you are having with your system. It is very likely when you re-install your backup, you would just reinstall all you problems again.

If your computer is still working, you can burn all your data to a CD/DVD as a backup. Then reinstall your OS and all your security programs, then copy your data back.

If your computer is not working you could remove your hard drive and temporarily install it in an enclosure and attach it to another computer, or install it in another computer as an extra drive (NOT the boot drive). Run a full battery of anti-malware on the drive so the second computer does not become infected. Then copy the data to the 2nd computer. Reformat and reinstall Windows. Burn a disk with your data files from the 2nd computer, and copy your data back.

Hi Nick,

Sounds a little like the problem that I had (except I had virtually all my data on another machine).

I used a suppliers restore disc to get Vista Ultimate up and running again, as the company where I bought the machine kindly sent me a restore disc. - Worth phoning and asking them.

Although I didn't say on my post (look under Riftvalley) I did restore my system the first time using the Vista restore - used and inbuilt MS program (I can't remember the exact method I used (it was a bit ad hoc!)) but I am sure the guys on this forum can tell you the most efficient way to do this. If you want I can tell you how I did it, but as I am not an expert I probably did not go the most efficient way.

If you have the same sort of issues then I listed exactly how I rebuilt my system, and what files to download.

I used an external docking station with a SATA drive to hold the temporary files and found this a great way to work (the docking station has both USB and eSATA connections, you could also use a DVD/CD. This way you could store all your files before you restore the machine (but as Digerati says they all need checking for virus - perhaps only keep the critical data that you cannot regenerate).

Of course if you have a more upto date system than I do you may have an SP1/SP2 version of Vista and therefore not need to download the appropriate files.

Best of luck

Martin