Deploying miscellaneous changes to XP boxes

I have a problem. I am sick and tired of doing the same thing to both of my Windows XP computers. If, for instance, I adjust the background colors to my liking on one machine, I have to do the same thing to the other machine. It wastes time. If I upgrade to a new machine and needed to reinstall my entire OS once I would like to just run a few scripts that set it up the way I like it. There has to be a software program that can detect the changes I make to files and the registry and let me repeat them on another machine. Sometimes it is more complex, like installing a shareware program to two machines. Perhaps a macro software program would work, but my experience is that these are only worth the time if you are doing the same thing more than 20 times and usually need tedious debugging. I looked around and tried using a program called thinstall. What I was hoping was that it could do a reg diff and then export the reg diff and let me execute a batch file of the changes I made into my other machine. But I could not find out how to make thinstall export reg changes. Do you know of a program that does what I want? What is the best program to use that can take file and registry "snapshots" before and after I make some changes to my new computer ? ## Deliverables There is no actual coding required. You just need to write up what you already know. (If you don't already know the best or a good answer, don't bid.) The winning bidder must explain in detail what program I should use to do the above task. A detailed explanation of why this program is the best one must be made. The total length of your writeup/answer should be at least three paragraphs and include a comparison to thinstall, the one program/package I already looked at and understand. ## Platform Windows XP sp2 or sp3.