My work laptop final succumbed to windows rot this morning. The tech is re-imaging a new drive with my company's standard windows 2000 image. I'm not exactly looking forward to re-installing my applications but there is a certain relief in being able to start over with a fresh system after defering a re-image for as long as possible.

Does anyone have any suggestions or website links for a check list of where to find all the files that I want to make sure I copy over to the new hard drive?

Also have you found any particular hard drive strategy works better than others. I plan to have Windows and the default applications on the C:\partition. Any applications that I install will be installed on the D:\partition under Business for work apps and Personal for anything else. I'll likely put the swap file on the D: partition also. I also swap in a removable hard drive when doing backups or ripping music. So I'm considering installing all personal apps to the removable drive.

Once I'm finished with the application installation, I'll take an image for the next time this occurs which should be in about a year based on previous experience.

Any suggestions that would make this process easier would be most appreciated. Thanks!

Alvin