On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:24:01 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:49:43 -0500, wrote:

It takes about 2 hours and most of that is waiting.

I don't know how you do that. It takes me that long just to get to
the right service pack level on the OS, and then I need to reinstall
all of my application software and bring it back to the right
maintenance level.

You might look into Ghost or Acronis or whatever.
I use Ghost, on a floppy. It's simple to use.
If you keep your installed apps on the c partition and image that
partition once in a while to another hard drive, you never have
re-install again.
It would take you 5-10 minutes to restore your OS and apps.
That's from dead in the water to up and running where you were.
I do OS and most app installs once on a computer.
This one is over 2 years old, since I built the box.
A new (different) motherboard is the only reason I have to do a
reinstall. There's probably a way around that too, but it gets
complicated and probably isn't time effective.

--Vic