I find it disturbing that PC World does not even mention the very best free backup/restore app out there -- Macrium Reflect -- and the only entry for it is well over a year old, since it shows version 6 and they have been releasing version 7.2 for some time now.
Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.
What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD
My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.
I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.
Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry. This allows you then to boot into WinRE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!
NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.