I want to make a complete image of my drive that, when restored, would make it seem like I never lost anything in the first place. All my files, drivers and programs would be exactly as they were, requiring no re-installation of anything. I don't want to go through any more reformatting, manually copying files, etc.

Would there be any decent programs like this for Windows? — Preferably freeware or open-source.

There is clonezilla which is a free live cd to do just this.

It can make backups of hard drives restore them over usb, cd or the network! It also works for Cloning hard drives and such and moving windows around (which is how I know about it ^_^) Also comes in a usb bootable set up as well ^_^

http://clonezilla.org/

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm looking into it now.

Awesome hope it works well for you ^_^

(My only peeve is I can't open the images to load them in a virtual machine and edit them that way other than that it does what its intended for very well ^_^)

I second the vote for Clonezilla. I've also used DriveImage XML, which is perhaps superior if you prefer to do your imaging without leaving Windows.

Clonezilla is a very good product for what you want to do in my opinion, in agreement with the opinions already posted here. Clonezilla is especially useful for imaging multiple machines from one, as in a lab situation, but that doesn't seem to be a primary concern of yours to me.