Factory Restoring my Laptop - A few Questions?

[dpgiffin]

Hey everyone. I'm a pretty experienced pc user, and I've reformatted and reinstalled windows a good dozen of times at least.

However this is the first time i've done so on a laptop, and using their hidden partition to do a factory restore. I'ts a sony vaio FE550G. Is there anything special anyone would reccomend doing?

I also some other questions about things i've acquired since the last time I've done this.

First, I have an 80gb external harddrive that i'm going to use for backing up anything on the local drive that i need.

In the past I've always just re-downloaded all the software and drivers I needed. is there a way to do all of this before I restore? Is there a way to pull installation files directly from the c:\programs folder?

I have also built up a sizable (about 45gb) ipod collection including music and video, mostly ripped stuff, but a good chunk of iTunes purchases. Is it best to copy these to the HD, or is there an easier way to transfer all of this to the new install?

Thanks!

[Minsc]

Originally Posted by dpgiffin

is there a way to do all of this before I restore? Is there a way to pull installation files directly from the c:\programs folder?

If you saved the installers that you downloaded, use those.

If not, you could copy and paste most apps from the program files folder to another computer and they'd work fine but not all(most would recreate the registry settings, but you could copy those over with regedit, and some might have other files on the system). You'd be better off reinstalling...

Is it best to copy these to the HD, or is there an easier way to transfer all of this to the new install?

Would probably be fastest to copy... (never used ITunes though)