I do the OS, then all the OS updates. The very next thing is Goback in case something gets screwed up. It might be a good idea to copy the hard disk at this point to a CD so you still have a clean registry. One of the last things is the anti-virus and/or system utilities, both of which can cause a lot of problems on installs. I am not sure what good running scandisk would do between installs, but it can't hurt anything. You might even want to defrag between installs, but it will take a month of Sundays to install all your software that way. If you can, get the most recent copies of all your software so you don't need to be doing all the updates separately. Keep an eye out for the version conflict manager so that all your OS updates don't get overwritten by older files. You may want to reinstall all the OS updates one more time after your software is installed, just in case newer files have been overwritten. After having done another format and reinstall, I have two questions: Do others have an order of program installation, such as, first OS, then antiviral program, then word processor, etc? Do others have a routine for mitigating problems, such as, running Scandisk between each program installation? Demetri Kolokotronis PCBUILD's List Owners: Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]> Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>