Whose keyboard and whose chair?
"c) if you don't keep backups, the problem exists between keyboard and chair."
The only satisfactorily reliable way I found of backing up Windows 7 was via WHS2011*. It was swift too, especially when restoring the lot; I have a certain fondness for testing backup solutions before I rely on them...
Windows 8 wasn't supported for backups by WHS2011 so got consigned to life in a VM. From that I can roll back to the previous snapshot if a patch borks it and my non-MS OS copes admirably with backing up the complete Win8 installation.
* Windows Home Server 2011.