The How To above is an interesting approach. Fast and unprotected (no anti-virus)(I do use Spybot occasionaly) does it for me. I just make a stripped down version of XP Pro and partition my HDD into two partitions; C & D. Partition C is usually 5GB because my newly installed windows is only +/- 2GB. I install all my programs and have my desktop and other high-traffic places set to be on partition D, along with a backup folder for games and such. I mostly play Valve (Half-Life and other mods), Epic (Unreal series), EA Games (the Battlefield Games), Lucas Arts (Jedi Knights II), and Blizzard (Warcraft III). And I also do a little bit of web design. I use Opera and Mozilla Firefox because secure and fast browsing is a key. The only things I have to reinstall are programs that heavily rely on the registry. (MS Office, Nero, and Adobe software) So if I do get a virus or nasty spyware or my computer just is running too slow, I spend +/-30 min. and reformat. For me that is more valuable. I sat down one saturday and spent a few hours making every thing automated using Microsoft's deploy tool, and It has been really handy. One Installation usually last me a couple of months. Windows Xp is installed in about +/- 15 min, and the other time is spent installing the software. I DONT have to redownload (through Steam) any of the Valve games because they're all on the other partition. If anyone wants any more information PM me and I will post a HOW TO. @wolf74481 Nice work on the How To and keep up the good work. My response is not to bash yours or be negative. This way (the one I described above) is what works for me and I'm just putting it out there incase it might benefit anyone.