Need to make custom recovery discs!

I'm selling a laptop to someone who doesn't really know much about them. The laptop I am selling I bought 2 years ago with no operating system. I have installed windows xp 64 bit and windows vista on it. I have cleaned out the OS's of all personally identifiable info, and both a a nice clean slate.

The reason why I don't just give the buyer my cd's are because it's a hassle to find the drivers for all the hardware on the laptop, and again, he isn't very well versed in computers. Ideally what I'd like to do is make a 'snapshot' of both operating systems so that if the worst should happen, he can put the cd's in and reload the computer to the way it is now, drivers and all.

Is there any way to do this?
Would it simply the process if only xp 64bit was installed?

 

You could use a program such as Acronis True Image (there is some discussion on this forum on how to get a free copy) to create a set of recovery media (DVD).
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=348978
You would perform a complete back up of the entire drive as instructed by the program and burn the resulting data to DVD's.

How much data are we talking about?, figure 4GB per DVD. If you only have OS's and drivers it shouldn't be that much.

Normally one copies the data to an external drive but I just tried a trial run of what you want to do and the program will prompt for new media as it is required.

You also create a recovery program disk (program driven within Acronis) to be included with the set. This is the disk which a user would boot from to use the recovery disks and recover the laptop back to its current state.

 

yep, you can back it up to dvd(probably 2 or a double layer) or a 8gb flash drive, etc. Acronis isn't picky, stick it on a usb hdd also. He'll also need the recovery media (dvd) for acronis-- after you install it, it's one of the program options to burn it.

 

Regardless of cost, would USB thumb drives be more reliable?

 

Very Freakin' cool download! Thanks a million!!