Tut on how to clean install Windows without data loss Courtesy of
http://www.geercom.com (use this link to go home if you surfed here from my professional writing site).
Geer Communications. David Geer - your on-time technology writer!
Welcome!
This is a very cool tutorial on how to do this from a very cool site:SysChat.
You could optionally also start with a dual boot with the same OS, apps and settings on both partitions so when you have a problem with one, you can boot into the other and pull data you're working on from an ext HDD, to which you should be regularly backing up your data.
Best Regards,
David Geer - your on time technology writer!
Geer Communications