Hehee! I'll join that club.

I learned long ago to have several partitions (and if possible, at least two
different HDDs as well). I have (at the least) 3 partitions on a
'mission-critical' machine. One for the OS, (5 - 10GB usually), one for
programmes (depends on how many games you install, mine's 15GB) and one for
the rest, that I call data.

Then I install Norton Ghost, a cracked version that I have, and once a month
or so, I image the boot partition onto another partition (or drive even if
possible). I keep a 'virgin' image, with my initial install, everything that
I use installed, say two days after the clean install, for ever. I then
delete images as I accumulate too many over the months. Also I have a fixed
size, contigous swapfile, I find that makes a huge difference, (especially
if you can situate it on a different HDD to your OS). Also, if you're
meticulous about only putting OS-related stuff onto the OS partition, it
won't get too big and the image will fit onto a DVD -/+ R for added saftey.

Bye-bye complete reinstalls! Anything like you experienced and you just boot
from rescue floppy, navigate to your image (be it on a HDD or DVD) and hit
'restore'.

I have two HDDs in this machine, a 200GB SATA running off a PCI - SATA/PATA
adapter (as I don't have SATA on-board), and a 250GB PATA running directly
off the on-board IDE controller. With the OS partition on one and the
swapfile, programmes partition and boot-partition images on the other it
makes a big difference in both speed and safety. I also make a DVD-R boot
image every few months and have backed up my programmes partition as well.

With 5 working PCs of my own here at the moment, all ready to go at the push
of the 'on' button, you can imagine how sick I am of re-installs. My main
machine is so far from a default installation that it takes (or used to
*take*) me days to get it back how I like it.

I know your financial situation isn't all it could be right now Evil,
however, I also know your machine is relatively new (newer than mine IIRC)
and should last a good few years yet. IMO the best thing you could do is
prostitute yourself for as long as it takes to treat yourself to a second,
large HDD. They're quite reasonably priced these days (God, I remember
paying an arm and a leg when i upgraded from 540MB to 1.7GB years ago) so,
depending on your looks, you may only have to prostitute yourself for 30
minutes or so. Then again, it could take you a week. <g>.

Cheers,

I prefer the 'telephone pole' method myself-usually sideways.

---
Jim

Acebest organisation! :-D