Frank,
What means do you have of backing the machine up then?
If you use something like Norton Ghost etc this creates an image file, nothing you can access and extract the specific files etc that you want to keep, and using the image will basically restore your machine to exactly as it is currently, which isn't what you want.
Do have a second partition or possibly a second hard disk? so you can move all of your data and IE favourites etc? you'll also need to take notes of certain things like email settings, username/passwords, pop3/smtp setting etc
It's a fairly easy process to do, but I've done it hundred of times.
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