But enough nattering about Help. It turns out that saving everything in your system's current state using Windows Complete PC Backup is a fairly innocuous process.
First, go to Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Backup and Restore Center.
Next, skip over "Back up files" and instead click on the second option: "Back up computer". Of course, you'll get the annoying User-Account Control box, asking you if you want to continue. (Say yes.) Vista will then ask you where you want to save the image. I recommend you put it on a DVD, so you have something that's freestanding and available if, say, your hard disk dies.
Be prepared for a bit of a shocker, though. Complete PC Backup informed me that my backup would require six to 10 DVDs. Considering that that would have eaten up to a third of my $16 carousel of 30 16X DVDs--$5.33 worth, or real money--I was glad to eventually find out that this was a Windows threat, not a promise.
TIP:
Make your own Complete PC backup DVDs.
Complete PC Backup runs gracefully, with a few Microsoft flourishes thrown in for good measure. For example, when it prompts me for what I know is a DVD, it says cryptically "Label and insert a blank disk bigger than 1 GB" into drive D. ALEX-PC 6/25/2007 4:01PM 1 Name of machine, date, number of the DVD (You can use CDs, too, though there'll be lots more labeling and inserting involved.)
Creating the backup disks is a mildly time-consuming process. Burning the first disk alone took an almost interminable 27 minutes. The second disk spun for 16 minutes before it was ready to be spat out. Then, incredibly, the third DVD was done after only three minutes, and Complete PC backup was, thankfully, done -- a good three discs earlier than its stated minimum.