So ive finally bought a new laptop......with Vista.

Hi everyone and thanks for all of the input much appreciated.

Since it's new, experiment now, before you have a lot of personal data you don't want to lose. Trey Revo if you want. Just make sure you know how to restore it to it's factory installed state if necessary. Also take a look at PC Decrapifier.

Also, this would be a good time to setup a backup strategy. I'd recommend buying a 250GB (or larger) hard drive and install it in an external USB 2.0 case (with fan). Spend a few more bucks and buy Acronis True Image Home then do a full image backup. That way no matter what happens you can recover easily. Make sure you keep the backup up to date.

Thanks ZTrucker

I have a 750GB external Hardrive (with a fan) and a copy of Acronis True Image so I can make a backup that way (I have in the past) although Im not quite sure how the restore function works.
But I also have Acers Backup and Restore Utility which I use all the time.
So I could make two? I just dont want to be making a load of Backup CD's like I did with my old computer, which btw was an Acer

If Acer created the D:\ partition, they did it for a reason that was important, at least important to the Acer people.

Pre-installed back-up for your Vista OS would have heavily restricted access, including warnings.
What warnings have presented themselves when you browse that D:\ partition?

If it turns out that D:\ is a partition for your OS back-up and recovery, then I would recommend against using D:\ for general file storage and against installation of application files on D:\ .

Contact your Acer Manufacturer to confirm information about their use of D:\
Doug

No warnings have come up when browsing the D:\ Drive and Im pretty sure all of the important OS Files are on another Drive called the PQService. I wasn’t going to put anything on there but it seems to be disproportionate in size in terms of file sizes stored on there compared to that of the C:\ Drive If that makes any sense.

All the Best,

Manic D

The only thing you need to burn to CD/DVD is data you never want to lose. For me it's music and pictures. Everything else I can lose and it wouldn't bother me at all, though I am very careful and have multiple backups of My Documents and Mozilla (SeaMonkey/FireFox) profiles, which includes E-mail, address books, bookmarks, etc.

I have a 750GB external Hardrive (with a fan) and a copy of Acronis True Image so I can make a backup that way (I have in the past) although Im not quite sure how the restore function works.
But I also have Acers Backup and Restore Utility which I use all the time.
So I could make two? I just dont want to be making a load of Backup CD's like I did with my old computer, which btw was an Acer

Manic, you have a great program on your hands for doing backups and restores of your system (Acronis). I see you were a bit confused on how to do a recovery in the case you might need to. When you run Acronis, it has the ability to make bootable media. In other words it will create a boot CD that you can put in your computer which will load Acronis and allow you to perform a full system recovery. Acronis can also make a bootable recovery partition on your hard drive so that you can press a hotkey at startup to start a full recovery. My suggestion is that you create this bootable rescue CD, and create the full system image of your hard drive on your external drive. I would even suggest that you first create the bootable CD, and then boot from it to make sure it works. While it is booted go ahead and make your full backup image now. This way no open files or folders (a possibility when doing live backups while windows is running) will get in the way of making a pristine and dependable backup.

My experience with Acronis has been nothing but positive and it is a very powerful and reliable piece of software, well worth the price.