Reinstalling my computer - or what I did with my weekend

My computer crashed. I was forced to realize how much I rely on this technology to stay connected to the people in my life. I'd been thinking of reinstalling because something went wrong with the computer writing to CDs so this just sort of moved everything up. I first tried to avoid it by cleaning up the drive and defragging which took all day Saturday, and I'll just note that the defragging shows a really pretty colored display showing before and after. I'd just recommend that people do this for their machines a little more frequently than every 5 years. Today was spent admitting defeat, and reinstalling. The problem with reinstalling is that you also have to reinstall all the software you want to continue to use. I'm about halfway through that, and have a couple of things to recommend, just in case you want to avoid the pain I'm suffering. First, keep all the installation disks in one place, including any drivers you've downloaded, especially if you keep hardware until it dies and the drivers might no longer be on the websites of the manufacturer. Second, do regular backups and keep those with the installation stuff. Third, a list of software you've installed from downloads would also be a good idea. We had to create the lists for all of these items and I'll just say how happy I am that my darling husband is a professional in the computer field and very knowledgeable about Microsoft. Otherwise, I have no idea how long I'd still be doing all of this. I'm still not done, there's a bunch of stuff to reinstall, plus restoring the backed up data. But I'm past the worst of it, especially the frustration of not being able to respond to comments, or even read my email.