Here's a suggestion to save you some time later on. Go get a program like Norton Ghost (or other drive image program). When you have your system loaded (get ALL updates to ALL programs and the operating system including the latest drivers (printers, scanners, etc) with everything you want/need loaded, use the Ghost (or drive image program) program to take a snapshot of you system in it's current configuration. If you have a CD burner, Ghost (and most other image programs) can back up you system directly to CD(s). You then have to make a restore boot floppy(s) using the Ghost program. Once you do this, you'll be able to get a fully working system in minutes instead of hours and hours.
If you back your system up like this from time to time, any data that you have on there will be backed up too so the most that you could possible lose would be the newest stuff.
I just restored my nieces computer and after that I made her a backup DVD (hold 7 cds of data) that boots itself and with a few mouse clicks the computer and about 20 minutes later it was back to a known good working condition. Of course any data that was lost is her problem if she didn't back it up to CD (or something else).
