Windows 7 re-install notes

So part of re-installing Windows is going to be installing all the software again. There may be a way around this, but I'm thinking that a full re-install may not be a bad thing. Here's what I have currently installed (I'm amazed that I accumulated so much in the 7 months or so that I've had this...):

Adobe Flash Player 10 plugin, Adobe Reader 9.3, AnyDVD (need to find license key), ATI Catalyst, AviSynth 2.5, Bioshock, Bonjour, Cantera, DVD Decrypter, ffdshow, GIMP, Ghostscript, GSview, Haali Media Splitter, iTunes, Java, MATLAB, MPC-HC, MeGUI, MS Silverlight, MS Visual C++ Redistributable, MikTek, MIT Kerberos, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, OpenAFS, OpenOffice, Opera, Python, QuickTime, Civilization 4, SimCity 4, Slik Subversion, SolidWorks, Starcraft, Steam, SubtitleCreator, TeXnic Center, TextPad, TortoiseSVN, VLC, VobSub

We'll see how much of this stuff I put back when I'm done. Fortunately I should still have most of the downloaded install files.

Update (2010/03/01 5:33 PM):

Am a bit annoyed because I'm hearing that I could have installed an upgrade version of Windows 7 on top of the RC without having a prior Windows license, i.e. I could have bought the $35 student version of Windows 7 Pro from the university bookstore instead of the $120 OEM version from Newegg. Oh well.

The installation itself was quite painless. Required no user interaction in the middle of the installation procress.

As for transferring files and programs, having them all on a separate partition (a small C: partition for the OS and two larger partitions for files and programs, ala /home and /usr) really helped. The installer copied everything on the C: drive (which was only few GB) onto a folder called Windows.old, which was nice because the "Windows Easy Transfer" utility wasn't so great at getting all the application settings (e.g. my Thunderbird mail profile).

I've re-installed most of the programs simply to get them properly registered with Windows and indexed in the start menu search bar (most of them still run fine just double-clicking on the executable)...all I have left are the games, the DVD ripping software, Ghostscript/GSview, GIMP, SolidWorks, TextPad, and VLC.

So, yeah. Yay Windows 7.