System Restore is usually from your "C:\System Volume Information" a hidden folder by default. Sounds like your D has the OEM install files on it.. to revert your computer hard drive back to Out of the Box new condition. If you didn't delete any of it :) .... An image of your C drive made by a program like Macrium will usually compress to about half the total used bytes that that drive shows as currently used in windows. Usually too big to image to DVD's unless you don't mind spending the time it would take to do,,, and of course the cost of several DVD's. My C drive is small compared to most peoples on win7 and shows 60gb used .. divided by about 4.7gb per DVD.. thats a lot of DVD's and lots of time sitting there changing those disks. fwiw Paid about $11 delivered from newegg for a usb hard drive enclosure and stuck an old laptop hard drive in it & use that here to save system images to weekly. Think DVD-R's cost me about $0.40 each in a pack of 50 including tax from Office Depot.

I read the article and felt saddened. We have owned Dell computers exclusively since the beginning. We still have 3 desktops and two laptops. Never had a problem all these years except for one desktop which is an Optiplex. This computer was purchased for our office and always had small problems since day one, 4 yrs ago. Others have criticized Dell service, but we have always found their service efficient and quick. We never sent a computer back, they would send a technician to the house to do any major repairs. We own two business machines, the Optiplex and a Vostro laptop. Both came with extended warranties. The laptop has always run well despite my husbands rough handling (dropped it twice from the desk and has knocked it out of the car a few times. Never got damaged...amazed! The Optiplex has had multiple service calls and it still doesn't work right. The USB drives keep quitting and require restarts to get things working. They have replaced the card readers and finally the motherboard. Same problems continue and I've learned to live with it. I do intend to contact them again after reading the article. I always liked the fact that their computers could be ordered with exactly what you wanted installed. You could configure the machine and not have to deal with all the junk usually installed on a store-bought computer. They do offer excellent service on their office machines. Very quick phone response, and always techs in the US. We are considering purchasing another desktop to replace my husbands 8 yr old computer and now am not sure if we'd go with another Dell. I tend to think of Dell like Ford. Ford seems to be finding its way back to America, maybe Dell will do the same. Jane

Updated and run the malewares. All checked out okay except for tracking cookies which I deleted. Today, I noticed the computer will shut down on its own and restart the same way. When it does, it does a chkdsk. I noticed this happed twice today when the computer was on but I was away from it (shower, then cooking). Not sure what's going on. I checked my memory that there's plenty left, more than plenty. Raven: I didn't do a scan of Partition D, should I? I just did Partition C. I'm at a loss at this point. I only had one freeze up today, and the rest where all with the computer shutting down itself. This is the latest message I got on the computer: Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown. A problem caused Windows to stop working. Also, that round spinny thing is taking a long time to do what it had to do.

I didn't know MS was skipping 9 and going to 10 - thanks, Emma. Yeah, I'm a little leery about buying a laptop online without trying it first. I love the keyboard and feel/response of the touchpad on my current laptop, so I want to find something as comfortable. I think it's best I wait until Windows 10 comes out... it might be less Windows 8'ish; although I've been using W8.1 on a desktop, so I'm familiar with it - and I don't absolutely hate it, like many people do. I didn't dislike Vista (my laptop), either, like many people do. I actually like Vista. Guess I'm not too hard to please when it comes to operating systems - lol.