Well, I wanted to upgrade my wife’s Sony VAIO laptop to Windows 10 since the free upgrade expires tomorrow. I’ve been going through updating all the drivers and software for the VAIO. I also wanted to create a recovery USB and system image…that was a mistake! Sony’s proprietary software is the only way to make a recovery USB. You can’t make one through the normal Windows 7 method by manually creating one. The files don’t exist where they should be even if you go into Command Prompt and check the locations. Some how Sony moves them somewhere that I can’t find. So, I tried to create a recovery USB through Sony’s proprietary VAIO Care but nope it needed to download a ‘new’ Sony Update software. It acted as though it downloaded but nothing happened so I did it manually from Sony’s website. Now I ran the VAIO Update software and it found a number of things. I’ve never seen update take so long in my entire life! It’s done two so far…well, actually still trying to complete the second. It’s installing an update to Intel HD Graphics 3000/4000. I know it’s installed already because the resolution changed and went back but it’s still sitting there saying installing. It’s been almost an hour. I’m really starting to hate this computer and Sony software. And to top it off, now I don’t know if I’m going to upgrade it to Windows 10. Even though the computer meets the specs with Win 7, Intel i5, 4Gb RAM, blah, blah, blah, Sony lists it on their Windows 10 compatibility chart as…Not Supported! Well, if Sony would put all their bloatware and other junk in the system to make it run then it would probably be supported! I’m just pissed right now at their stupidity. Anyways, sorry for the rant. This is definitely TL:DR worthy!
MysticHydro That is silly. You might be able to upgrade to Windows 10, then do the “refresh” in Windows 10. This will remove all existing applications and only keep user data. It might get rid of some of the bloat.
Do with caution, since there is always the chance that some of the hardware won’t have Windows 10 compatible drivers.
MysticHydro You can make an image with command line commands, then use that if you wish, takes 15-30 minutes to make the image you can store where ever for safe keeping
Only0neKnight I can probably make an image but I need recovery media to get the image to work. It’s an ultrabook so it doesn’t have an optical drive. It’s Windows 7 so it doesn’t have the option to create a recovery USB but only recovery disc. The whole problem is revolving around getting the recovery USB and the lack of support of Win 10 on the device.
teh_g I can’t do a refresh because she has software that’s a pain to install and other things she needs on there that I don’t feel like putting back on. I’m just not going to upgrade it because I don’t feel like continually troubleshooting the possible lack of driver support. I really just want to buy her a new laptop. So much simpler! 
…actually we tried that during Christmas and the computer didn’t even want to go through OOBE (Out of Box Experience)!
MysticHydro The command line way is a windows made image, bootable and all when done. And then you can put it on a Flash Drive when done.
Depends what kind of image you wish to make Windows Recovery Image (WinRE) (link text) or Clean install Image (link text) … But for both type of image you need to use WinPE (Windows Preinstallation Environment) (link text) to capture full os in single file … but for that you first need clean Windows install in so called Audit Mode (link text), and installation needs to be done with Auto-unattended script (link text)… I doubt that you will reinstall your current OS but you can make recovery or fresh install image in Virtual Machine … VM Ware or Hyper-V … since it is not easy to explain how to do it … if you wish to know how to do it I can make tutorials on forum …