I only have one good PC at home for development and surfing in the internet. Sometimes I download free-/shareware from the internet and install this software on this PC. After doing this more than 10 times my Windows XP performance will be going down. For this problem I bought Norton Ghost (http://www.symantec.com [1]) to save my Windows XP image to a DVD. If I now have problems with my Windows XP installation I put in the DVD, boot from it... and 10 minutes later I have a cleare Windows XP installation.
To have all my settings I have configured my Windows XP before creating the image: internet connections, outlook (.pst on my second hard disk), visual studio, my documents and desktop redirected to my second hard disk. On my first harddisk I have all my programs installed and on my second one all my documents and data.
I think this is the best way to install PCs. I found some IT people that install every program that is not installed by Windows XP on the second harddisk. But if you have a problem with your Windows XP installation you can start a new setup on the first harddisk, but you have to install all the other programs by hand.
What do you think about this? What is your best way to install desktop PCs and notebooks to be sure that if there is a problem with your Windows XP installation you save time to repair it?