Whenever you go for an upgrade to a new version of Windows, or even just decide to wipe and reinstall in the name of keeping your system in order and stopping everything from gradually gathering clutter and slowing down.

For things like this, a durable USB stick is recommended

The occasional wipe may well prove necessary, especially for anyone upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7, and given the fact that 10% of all Windows machines are now running Windows 7, that seems to be a course of action that more and more users are taking. Moreover, there are those days when nothing seems like so good an ideas a wipe just for the sake of a clean start.

Of course, the only issue with the occasional format, especially once you start to get used to the idea of a clean slate from time to time, is that almost invariably there’s something that gets left behind. The easiest way to work these things is to keep a nice backup USB stick somewhere close at hand on which you can keep the apps you use most often to save you the trouble of redownloading everything later on.

Drivers:

This one should go without saying, but it seems to be something that people manage to neglect far too often. It’s a good idea to pick up some up-to-date drivers for your hardware for installation once you’ve finished with your format.

This is the last thing anyone needs to see on a fresh install of Windows

In an ideal world, you could grab all of these manually, but let’s face it, we’re all busy people, and the more we can leave to our newly reinstalled OS to run away and grab for us, the less effort involved. Still, the one thing we see all too often is an OS install that somehow manages to skip over the vital step of installing drivers for a wireless card… which can leave notebook and netbook users in all kinds of trouble when it comes to doing just about anything.

So, if in doubt or even just if you’re feeling lazy, the one thing you should definitely make sure you’ve got your network drivers somewhere local.

Browser:

First things first, for those of you not using the whatever the default browser is for your OS, you might do well to pick up a browser, if only to save you having to use another browser to find yours own preference.

Windows 7's browser ballot makes downloading a browser that bit less essential...

Of course, the need for this one has been cut down a fair bit since the introduction of Windows 7’s ‘browser ballot’ option, which ensures that the operating system itself should prompt you to ask what your preferred browser is, as long as your browser is among the “big five,” which for the moment includes Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari.

Still, if you’re going to put together a USB stick full of handy applications, you’d do well to have a browser on it, to say nothing of having to install any version of Windows other than Windows 7.

Instant Messaging Client:

For the most part, people tend to be happy with whatever client accompanies their IM service of choice, whether that’s MSN Messenger, Google Talk or, increasingly Facebook’s built-in chat client.

Pidgin may not look like MSN, but it's got a solid aesthetic

Still, if you’re going to build one USB stick to suit as many needs as possible, you’d do well to throw in a solid, multi-service chat client. In that respect, Pidgin is fairly hard to beat. It doesn’t boast quite the same level of visual polish as Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, but functions in very much the same way. Of course, the biggest difference is that if you opt to use something like Pidgin IM, you can sign in to MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Facebook Chat and any number of other Jabber-based chat affairs.

It’s a solid client, with a decent look that manages to be an elegant replacement for any number of other applications and, at the same time, saves you from having to keep a bundle of different tabs open to keep track of the various in-browser chat services to which you might subscribe.

Pidgin is a solid affair, and a very fine thing to have around for any fresh install.

Anti-Virus:

When it comes right down to it, you’re going to want to have some kind of anti-virus software to ensure that your freshly installed is kept as clean as possible, and safe from some of the issues that might well have prompted a reinstall in the first place.

AVG's interface is admirably simple

For a combination of it taking up relatively little in the line of resources, being free and, of course, being fairly reliable, we’d recommend an installation of AVG[http://free.avg.com/ie-en/download.prd-afg]. Aside from that though, there’s not an awful lot to be said about AVG, except for the usual few bits and pieces of anti-virus advice; make sure you keep it up to date and you shouldn’t find yourself in too much trouble.

It boasts a PC Pro recommended badge, as well as five stars from Cnet, two fairly heavy-duty recommendations.

Media Players:

This is where things get a little interesting, given the sheer number of choices out there in terms of media players. There are those who find the Windows Media Player route the simplest and most effective way of keeping both an extensive music library in an application that will also play video, but for the most part the two are kept fairly separate.

Foobar2000:

If you’re looking for a lightweight music player that will allow you to manage a library quickly and easily, Foobar2000 is a shockingly effective solution. Not only does it manage to do just about all of the things you’d reasonably expect your general purpose music player to do, but it keeps the vast majority of it without going over 1MB of memory.

A decently skinned Foobar is a lovely thing

Moreover, it’s not just a solid application with a clean, if slightly dated, aesthetic, but one that’s pleasantly customisable, with a bundle of skins available if you feel like retooling the look and feel of your player a little. It’s never going to look quite as good as an iTunes or a SongBird, and certainly it’s no Windows Media Player, but all the compromises are in the right places, and underneath it all it’s fantastically stable…

CCCP:

There are a fair few different codec packs available to ensure that all of your various videos are playable without needing your media player to go haring off to find some obscure codec that you could far more easily have grabbed as part of a pack.

Of course, no pack is perfect, and so different people hold their various allegiances to one codec pack or another, whether it’s the K-lite Codec Pack or the Combined Community Codec Pack (or CCCP for short).

Media Player Classic/VLC:

Media Player Classic seems to come installed with just about any of the codec packs you could care to install, and for many serves well as a fairly bare but fully functional video player. Still, there are times when it just doesn’t quite cut it, and in those situations it’s ideal to have a little backup knocking around.

VLC is a relatively simple, no frills affair

VLC, once upon a time better known as Videolan, is another reliable video playback utility. A solid rule of thumb is that, in the few cases where either VLC or Media Player Classic won’t open something, you’ll likely find that the other will do you very well indeed.

For anyone watching anything with subtitles, VLC seems often to disagree with them or simply to chew them up a little, so in those cases it’s well worth your while trying MPC first and seeing how it goes. Similarly, VLC can, from time to time, have issues with playback of high definition content, in which case you might, again, be better off with MPC.

WinRAR:

WinRAR is one of those applications that tends to get lost in the shuffle between different operating systems and is, sadly, all too easy to forget until you’ve already downloaded a bundle of various different bits and pieces of increasing importance and then you realise that you’ll need to extract it all before you can proceed.

WinRAR is almost painfully necessary, don't leave it behind

This one will vary in terms of importance, but for those of us who find ourselves with network drivers somehow not surviving a format, it becomes practically essential, since so very many drivers seem to download compressed as RARs.

There’s not an awful lot more to say about WinRAR, other than that it’s a very handy piece of kit to have available, especially if for any reason you end up needing to format without being able to guarantee internet access on the other side. It’s a solid piece of kit, and potentially irreplaceable if you end up in a tight spot.

Closing:

There were a bundle of other applications we’d been tempted to include, but these are likely the few that everyone will want to have, in one flavour or another, installed from the moment they set a new system in motion. Of course, there will be preferred apps that haven’t made the list; people who prefer one media player or browser over another, but for the most part these lists will be fairly similar.

It might seem like fairly simple stuff, but the fact is that whenever we format, there’s always an app or two that end up getting lost in the shuffle, so it’s handy to have a USB stick, or even just a plain old writeable CD, with those bits and pieces that might end up annoying by their absence. A little preparation goes a long way.