sick, or hacked?

[carnageX]

zero yellow exclamation marks. i even opened all of them to make sure there wasn't one hidden down in someplace. so is that luck, or am i possibly missing something.

Means that Windows auto-installed drivers.

I'd say you're fine unless you notice you're having weird issues. Maybe the only one I'd update is graphics drivers.

 

[XWrench3]

ok, i have this laptop all set and ready to do everything i am going to do. meaning all the software is back to normal. i would like to make an exact copy of the entire hard drive, before it gets cluttered with junk and or messed up somehow. i tried copy and past to the "D:" drive first, which i believe has the software to start the computer and allow recoveries to be attempted. that worked to the 99% mark, and then it would not let me copy the remaining 1%. which most likely means the rest of it is useless. similar to throwing a grenade with the pin still in it so to speak. i am the only user account, so i am the administrator. so it makes no sense (to me) that i would need admin privileges in order to copy it. copy and paste i know. acronis(?) i have heard of, but i am not certain how that works. so how do i get an exact copy of the hard drive as it is now, so if i have to do this again, i will not have to spend 2 days collecting and downloading software to get my computer back to normal? fwiw, my hd now contains 36gb of data, and i have a freshly formatted 64gb flash drive waiting for data.

 

[carnageX]

Yes use Acronis or another disk-imaging utility. I don't remember if when Acronis takes an image, it only snaps used space, or if it snaps the entire drive (meaning however big your HDD is, that's how big the saved image will be).

After you create the image however, you'll have an exact copy of your current install.