Any precautions required?

[AFX]

and besides, recovery from crashes is not always straight forward [yes, even in windows 8/8.1] it all depends what happened, and so you can't even assume it will be quicker - clean images of an OS are often a good starting point, still need to reinstall the software though...

How can I do that? Moreover, the actual reason is that my Norton keeps shutting down all browsers due to some 'threat.' After 2 days of scanning and diagnosing it finally got resolved but I backed up my entire data just to be safe. Now that I have a back-up of it, I might as well format my computer and install the new software.

[handrawn]

Firstly there may be a way to do it in windows 7/8.1 but I haven't used native windows backup for 10 year or more
In my experience windows restore points by and large don't. Especially when you really need them; perhaps they were designed by bankers...

I use third party: 'Acronis True Image' - this is not a free program, and there is a learning curve - free image programs exist, the only one I would refer anyone to is 'easeus todo backup free' which you can google

I understand that you can do it in Norton, but I have never used that program for such things either, or to be honest anything other than when helping others who were stuck using it because 'it came with the computer' [hummmm.... thinks]

anyhow pretty siimple principle - you get the OS build up and running and activated and then you make a 'full' image of the partition, so that you can restore it to that percise point if the OS gets screwed by reinstalling the complete partition - because it replaces everything on your partition you loose eveything that is there when you overwrite, which is therefore of no use whatsoever for data backup - but it saves a lot of time for a clean install - you can of course use these programs for data backup, but that's a separate routine

if like me you run at least one computer 'out in the wild' for one reason or another then it becomes a matter of routine to go back to the image to reset the test-bed OS