Every now and then, an OFF flyer observes problems with his install.
Files may get corrupted in many possible ways, and it is often hard
to find out what it was, that ruined your day.

A friend of mine recommended the use of a Back-up Program.
With such a program (in my case ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE)you can back-up
a partition, or even a whole drive.

Now, although I usually have all games on D:Games, I put "Over Flanders Fields"
on my C:Bootdrive. The reason: OFF writes files into other Windows folders on
C:, and so, if I want to back everything up, I need these data too.

Now I make a backup every three days or so, of the whole C: drive/partition.
After three backups, I delete the oldest one; so I always have 2 backups of C.
Whenever anything goes haywire (not only with OFF files - it also saved me,
when I had Windows problems after updates etc.) - I write the Backup back
onto C: and the problem is solved.

The handling is very easy (my friend said, he recommended ACRONIS to me, because
it was idiot proff - fine friends I have.

And so now you recommend it to us. You are a fine friend also, haha! Yes always good advice to backup your drives. There are a number of systems now it seems such as CARBONITE. I have only a similar routine to what you do/use.

That's a way, indeed.
But that's a lot of time consuming, I mean to backup the whole drive. There's the obvious advantage that you won't have to reinstall the Windows again in case of need... you just copy it.
However there are other methods for backup. Personally, I prefer those that instead of backing up the entire system, use file incremental or differential methods for creating the backup.
They offer the advantage, of being quicker because after the first backup, they only copy new files and those that were changed.
Of course this way, if I had an issue with Windows I will have to format again and install the system. But sometimes it's beneficial to make a clean install, instead of using an old back Windows backup.
The program that I use for backup it's called "Cobian Backup" and it's free.

No, it doesn't take more than a couple of minutes.
And you benefit from this method by having a rescue, when Windows fails somewhere,
as well as you have saved your OFF Campaign Pilots.

I used Acronis True Image for a while, until I downloaded an update that completely trashed Windows Vista to the point where it wouldn't even load. At that point, faced with reinstalling everything on a five year old computer, I "forced myself" to buy a new system with Windows 7 64 bit. Now I use Windows' own disc copy function and it hasn't failed me yet.

Backing up partitions is a good idea if you have the disc space, but I'll never touch another Acronis product. Just saying.

Didn't mean to be a sales manager for Acronis, guys.
It is just about the back-up idea - whatever product you prefer.

It depends on the size of your Windows/programs partition. And like I've said some times it's more beneficial to make a clean installation of your Windows system than use an old Windows installation.

Anyway in spite of not using Acronis for creating images, I do use it for cloning disks. I've never had, so far, any problems with Vista or any other Windows version.

How do you mean "cloning disks", von Paulus? Copying CDs or DVDs?

If you want to replace an old HD with a new one without wanting to do, for example, a clean install, then you try clone it.
Basically cloning disk means to copy an HD (or a partition) to another HD.

Ah, thanks!