Storing files before XP reinstall

Hello,

Apologies if this lacks focus and seems like a ramble. I'm just looking for any helpful advice from you.

I've a number of problems which have made me decide to reinstall Windows XP and start afresh. Briefly, they are:

- Unable to set up a direct connection network. I've tried everything and it won't accept that another PC is connected, even though it pings.

- Anti-virus problems. Weird problem. Norton Anti-virus won't load, update or unistall. The problem also prevents me from accessing other anti-virus sites - even typing 'anti-virus' into google causes IE to close down. I downloaded a free trail version of avast which has expired and I'm unable to uninstall that either. As a result, at any time, I have a few viruses on my machine with no means of getting rid of them.

- General lack of speed.

What I'd planned to do is a full reinstall of Windows XP. However, I have around 3,000 mp3s which I obviously don't want to lose. Because I'm unable to set up a direct connection, I can't just switch them to another PC while I reinstall. So I'd planned to set up a VPN to do this.

My question is, am I going about things the right way? Is a reinstall worth my while? Is a VPN a good way to store my music files? Is there any thing you guys would do differently? Basically, any advice on what to do would be gratefully received.

Thanks!

 

do you have one or two hard drives or is one hard drive partioned?

 

gotta flash drive? Howbout a cd burner? or....get gmail and email them to yourself

EDIT: About the cd burner, you could use WinRAR to compress in the 'best' mode and split into CD writable-size volumes (700Mb)...either way, your lookin at about 50 CD's for this

 

hrm. well, first of all, ya gotta get rid of those pesky viruses (assuming they exist). for this, try downloading avg: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download886.html and installing that after uninstalling norton and avast. run a full system scan and hope everything's hunky dory.

and an idea to "back" things up: nondestructively partition the drive and split all the files. you'll have to ask others of any free/shareware/demo programs that can do that. i know partitionmagic 8 can, but that's $70