check this out... i've done fresh installs on people's boxes a number of times -- this looks like it can simplify life a lot, by bundling all the installation of the little programs you have to install afterwards ;)

http://ninite.com/

Granted I don't do installs *that* often, but it still looks pretty cool

That's fantastic. I might have to point this out to our tech guy in case it's helpful to him at all.

I have a laptop to do a clean wipe on - will give it a try and let ya know how it works.

nice tool and all progs I install on fresh XP-install to be selected but that would reduce time I can spend doing other things so ..........

softwares get updated sometimes quite often so dvd/usb install disc/stick would needed to be updated quite often.

wow this is pretty cool!