Best strategy for regular reinstall of XP?

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Hello,

To prevent my computer from slowing down to a crawl or experiencing all
sorts of weird/unpleasant crashes/freezes I would like to be able to
'start over' (formatting the main disk, reinstalling XP) on a regular
basis (once a month, every two months) without the whole process taking
a few days to complete.

The reason it takes that long for me is because for my job I have to
use a wide variety of software, ranging from big things like Adobe
Creative Suite to all sorts of small utilities. I also have to try out
new software on a regular basis which usually does not become part of
my 'essential software' set which doesn't help with keeping a clean and
reliable computer set-up.

I have been messing about with disc images of early installs but then
still have to spend a lot of time updating my applications, settings,
serial numbers etc. Ideally, I would only have to do a clean install of
XP, leaving all my (essential) installed software intact and throwing
out all the non-essential stuff. But I'm not sure this is possible.

I have already moved the My Documents folder to a different internal
drive so that is not affected but can I do the same with the Program
Files folder? Can I install one piece software on one disk and another
somewhere else? Will everything still work?

If anyone has advice on this it would be greatly appreciated.


Regards,


Daniel Baars

.

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