Here are couple of tips.

1.  Ghosting (Imaging).  You basically re-install everything the way you want it and once you are happy with the setup... You make an Image of the hard drive onto a DVD or whatever and the next time you want to re-install you simply re-image the drive with the previously imaged system and BAM!!! you are up and running in matter of minutes.

2. Virtual Machines... Microsoft has a Free Virtual Machine product there are also commerical ones.  You basically run the system in a Virtual image... there are many drawbacks to this.. but its great especially if you wantn to test a new installation of a piece of software without making a mess of you're working system.

So for example Bryce 7 is release >:)  you can install it in a Vritual Machine and see how it works before commiting to installing it on  you're production system.