xp restore any easy ways

Have been building and trying to keep runing several computers for 4 sons for several years now ugh.90% of problems with windows. When things go wrong I have often had to reformatt and reload xp or install to a new folder both of which is a bit of a chore at the moment I am stuck in a restore setup just keeps rebooting deperately do'nt want to formatt Is there anyway of restoreing file stuctures
somthing along the lines of scandisk or some of the other tools that used to be on the old win98 boot disk.I have just read about slipstreaming cds with sp2 which has me thinking can xp be loaded on to a cd in a simular manner and would it boot and allow me to read other drives another question I have would like to ask is can xp be loaded on an exturnal hd caddy and boot through usb presumably not. Any tips on how to make thing easier would be greatly appreciated.

 

Your best bet is to get Acronis True Image and make an image every few weeks. When things go wrong, restore the latest image that way you don't have to keep going back to a clean install with no programs installed and all the personalization gone. You may lose a few weeks of programs/updates but that is easily recovered.