Would like some advice on computer OS plan

[Dominus Atheos]

I would just like a few more pairs of eyes to look over this plan before I set it up.

I would like to set up windows so that every time I restart it, it wipes all the changes I've made to it since I set it up. I asked about doing this a while back, and Uranium suggested this nifty software. What I'm planning to do is install Vista with my user folder/profile mapped to another hard drive, then install the software I want, then install Microsoft SteadyState and turn it on. My user folder will be on a different hard drive so SteadyState won't affect that, and with luck any programs I install just for one time use (I do that a lot. Just today I wanted to edit some separate pictures together into one big picture/collage, so I installed GIMP. Then when I couldn't figure out how to do that with GIMP, I installed Picassa. I'm still trying to figure out Picassa) will store all their user preferences into my user profile, or Vista will virtualize everything into there, and the next time I install that program I can pick up where I left off.

The end result I'm trying to accomplish is every time I restart my computer, I get a pristine Windows install, no matter what software I install, no matter what setting I play around with, no matter what I do, it acts and performs the same way as if I just installed it. Any suggestions, comments, or criticisms?

[phongn]

I would strongly suggest heavy testing (perhaps even in a VM) before you do this "for real."

[Spyder]

What Phong said. If you're really bored you could also prepare an unattended installation script for your OS, fork out for some packaging tools and repackage all your software for nice clean installation/uninstallation (or handcode your MSIs in VB for extra I-really-have-nothing-better-to-do points).

Well, ok, the MSIs might be a little over the top but an unattended install script might be right up your alley and they're not that hard to do.