I'm re-imaging my laptop tomorrow (to a school-provided Vista Ultimate image with a whole pile of software) because it has been slow as hell and randomly crashing for quite a while now. It hasn't "slept" properly for a while, either - if you leave it in sleep mode for more than five minutes or so it won't wake up and you have to force-shutdown. Whole host of issues. Anyway, ideas for general files that I shouldn't forget to save?

I was going to just use the Vista Complete Backup, but (apparently) you can't retrieve individual files from that, and with that in mind I don't think it would do me any good.

thanks in advance for any suggestions
 

If you backed up all your personal data, bookmarks, email client settings, and saved games, I can't think of anything specific you should care for. What programs do you use regularly?
 

It's mostly school stuff really, I burn a lot of time just doing random internet crap and other than my bookmarks I don't really care to save any of that. I have all my pictures and cd music saved already so I don't have to go through the nuisance of putting it on my computer again. Someone suggested just copying the entire C:\ drive (excluding the Windows folder) to the external hard drive, any merit to that? I have ~400gb free on the external and the laptop has about 120gb on it.
 

you can use the Complete Backup feature. You can mount the VHD file that it produces as a drive, and get files out of it.

http://bartdesmet.net/blogs/bart/arc...9/02/4385.aspx

If not, just grab your user folder under C:\Users, and any odd program that stores user data in with the Program Files (like StarCraft).
 

Don't copy the whole drive, you could easily be putting issues back on with your user profile.

If you want to grab things, get the places where you save documents. Get any save games you want. Save your favorites, chat shit, stuff like that.

It's hard to say really when it's someone else's PC.