Critique my re-install software list

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BarneyGumble

Gawd
Joined
Oct 25, 2005
Messages
725
I'm going to a giant LAN party next week and I am compiling a disc of drivers and software in case I need to do a reinstall (which i had to do twice last year, without a disc of this sort and limited internet connection.) Here is my list, am I forgetting anyting? Any suggestions? Thanks!

Windows XP Disc
Roxio software Disc

Motherboard drivers
nVidia drivers
driver for monitor
driver for mouse
driver for sound card
AMD drivers

Winace
Firefox
AVG Free
AD-Aware SE
Winamp
Daemon Tools

Game discs?
 
WinXP patches? maybe do an nLite install disc (test it first) and automate the reinstall as much as possible, if not, at least have WinXP + all patches on that.
 
I would just make a bootable DVD with a Ghost restore image on it with the Ghost executable. If anything should happen, you'd be up and running fully in a few minutes, and would only need to install your games again.
 
Is there anyone that has ready made WinXP Home discs with the updates that I can use with my install key? At least is there anywhere I can go that has a compiled list of the updates that I can get downloaded on high speed?

(In no way shape or form was that meant to be taken as piracy. I spent my hard earned $$$ on XP. Its just that it takes about a week to get everything fully updated.)

I have dialup and it takes forever for me to get all the updates when I reformat.
 
Several sources, actually.

www.autopatcher.com is one, but it just points you back to the MSFN forums to get the appropriate files.

http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/ <<<--- This is the one I'd recommend for RyanVM's Windows XP Post-SP2 Update Pack, a single executable file that contains all the most current updates as of the date noted on that webpage, and Ryan and his gang of cohorts are always adding the currently available stuff regularly. You can even add tons of tiny apps that you normally install seperately so they're preinstalled when you do the full XP install.

djnes has an excellent point of installing everything the way you want it then making a bootable image recovery CD using Ghost or some other app like True Image (djnes prefers Ghost; I prefer True Image). In the end they both accomplish the same goal:

They give you a DVD (or two, if your installation is large enough) that you can insert in the drive, reboot the computer, then restore the machine back to the state it was in bit-for-bit when you made that image "snapshot" of it the first time. Imaging software is the greatest thing to happen to PCs in decades, really, and I couldn't live without it - and neither could most people that use PCs as much as most of us at this forum do.

Hope this helps, but there are a lot of places that offer the ability to get the updates in either the single files or one large "updater" file. The issue is that you'll never keep up with it since the OS is constantly being updated with new features, bug fixes, security patches, etc.

Such is the life of an operating system...
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