Yea Samsom, was sort of thinking along the same lines >> a "just because" gut thought thing. Right now grabbing info from the "How to Geek" to do just that but for an inclusive slightly different situation.
You see, when I moved from XP to Win7, got rid of my dilapidated old HP puter and bought two identical Gateway SX2855's with the identical Win7 Home premium 64 bit on each. My form of backup, of its own. Not an image, but close I thought.
But the Puter-1 got the black screen of death with a white cursor on bootup, so that puter is now in fix mode. I want to back up this Puter-2 because I did not have an image made of it but at the same time had no image of the Puter-1.
So was just wondering, can you see any real problem with creating a system repair disk to boot from for this Puter-2 and also a system image backup of this Puter-2.
Then, was thinking with those two Puter-2 dual backup tools in hand, also use the Puter-2 boot disk to open Puter-1 (black screen) and perhaps use the Puter-2 image on the Puter-1 if needed?
Uncharted territory perhaps? Your thoughts are likely much better than mine though, so it all helps!!
BTW, here the HTG articles (if needed)at all:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/5409/create-a-system-repair-disc-in-windows-7/http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/ Again, really appreciate your time, Jim