[saltman]

preparations should include backing up anything that you don't want deleted. This should include your music, photos, etc... (which it sounds like you already have done) but also emails, etc... BE very careful with what you bring back onto your new installation. music files are pretty safe. pics and emails are not. That's where virii hide. Sometimes pics are bound with executable files such as trojans so that they run when you view them.... This is one way people hide trojans and trick people into opening them without their knowledge. I would only bring back pics that i knew where they came from. emails should be obvious.

As far as formatting/installing that is a piece of cake. You just plop your windows cd/dvd in and it will autoplay. It will then ask you if you want to format and install... click yes and it will do it's thing. Don't do a fast format. Also you want to format your hard drive as NTFS not FAT32. when it asks. FAT32 is limited in many ways... such as file size no greater then 4GB which sucks for dvd .iso files. That's it. It will format and put on a fresh copy of windows. It's probably easier to download a cracked copy that has sp2 preinstalled. (this should be legal since you own a copy already) . Otherwise you will have to download all the updates which will take some time.

Hope this helps.