How to backup fresh OEM install of Windows 7 for a restoration

Solution 1:

The activation is done by a marker in the BIOS (SLIC), a Digital OEM Certificate (*.xrm-ms) and a generic OEM product key.

On your currently installed OEM Windows search for the OEM.xrm-ms, make a backup of it and run a tool that can extract the currently used OEM key. Now save this Key + OEM.xrm-ms to an external drive and do a clean Windows 7 install.

After the setup, copy the OEM certificate to C:\Windows\System32\OEM, run %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\SLMGR.VBS -ilc %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\OEM.xrm-ms, next enter the OEM key with this command: %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\SLMGR.VBS -ipk KEY.

After you done both, run this command to activate Windows:

%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\SLMGR.VBS -ato

Now you have a clean Windows which is activated via OEM key. Make a system image of it or create a setupcomplete.cmd which does all the steps on your own and added it to the Windows DVD so that the setup does all the steps on its own.

Solution 2:

The "cleanest" way to do this in my eyes would be to make a disk image of the entire disk as it stands. Then you can restore it to EXACTLY as it is today at any point in the future.

Something like a bootable copy of Acronis True Image will do this, or linux's dd can do so too I believe.