Deployment software and driver packs for Windows
Two very interesting things brought to my attention of late.
First we have nLite and vLite , which looks to be very nice Windows deployment/unattended setup tools, compared to the standard Microsoft Unattended setup tool for XP - I've not looked at the Microsoft's own Vista deployment tool yet so I can't comment on how good/bad it is.
As an aside, I have to say that at RunPCRun it is rare to install/reinstall Windows. Installing isn't necessary as we don't produce hardware and it's well known that OEM's pre-install Windows for you. Secondly reinstalling Windows is fairly rare as there is almost always a fix that will bring a dead system back to life. Only in cases such as a total hard drive failure, in which case if it's in the warranty period the manufacturer will replace the drive and then the data is restored from backup. If it's not under warranty then it's usually a good reason to upgrade that old PC rather than spend good money on labour on an old machine.
I have seen reinstalling Windows to be used as a fix for almost any situation by people and comapanies. In my eyes it's a crazy thing to do for no other reason than "I don't know how to fix it"
Secondly we have DriverPacks.net where some very nice person has spent a lot of time amalgamating all the drivers for a particular peripheral together all in one folder. This will be very useful to have on the network or on a USB key (especially the SATA and Network drivers) in order to change those yellow plings/bangs in the Device Manager to nicely installed devices.
Also you could combine nLite and DriverPacks together and you have a very nice Windows installation CD.