The best way to accomplish this, imo, is to build an "image" of your PC.
Basically, you use a program called Ghost (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Ghost), to take a "snap shot" of your PC. You save that "snap shot" as a ghost image file, and you can use that file to restore your PC. What I do, is install my OS, install ALL of my regularly used applications, run a Windows update, tweek out my user interface as much as possible, then I create an image of my C: drive. This way, if my OS ever gets hosed, or infected or just plain clogged up, all I have to do is reload from that image and I am done. No reinstalling software, no reinstalling drivers, no reconfiguring, etc. Just done.
The only drawback to this, is it is a little complex for the average comptuer user, and you need the Ghost software to do it, and you need an additional drive or network connection to another PC to "dump" your initial image too.
That probably didn't make much sense, but....
Bart