Backing Up and Restoring To Factory Settings on Laptop?

[carepackage]

Firstly, sorry if this is a recurring question but I wanted some feedback on the right way to approach this. So my laptop has been pretty slow lately (I think it's one of the Asus N56 variants so it shouldn't be a slouch with a mobile i7 and 650M) and I'm thinking it's time for a refresh.

I've never really bothered with resetting laptops before, in the past all I remember doing was using system restore a couple times back on Windows XP. So my initial reaction was to do a restore and everything would be dandy. However, when I started the restore it warned me that I'd need to reinstall all my programs (I don;t remember that happening in XP), which is more than I bothered to count. I've probably filled up 1TB with files, and in addition this would wipe all the stuff that came preloaded from Asus. (By the way I do have the original CD from Asus that seems to be filled with drivers for different bits and pieces, and I guess I could just reinstall all those programs later if needed)

So I want to reset the laptop, and keep all my files and programs obviously, but to be honest I've no clue on how I would backup everything or whether there's some sort of risk about not being able to reinstall some stuff (by this I mean CDs that will have been lost or programs using product keys that would have expired when I first used them).

Sorry to make this so long winded but I hope you get the gist of it. Basically, help on how to reset my laptop and if I can do it without ruining my licenses to programs is much appreciated.

 

[Alabalcho]

You cannot restore your laptop and keep your programs. If this is pre-Win8 laptop, restoring will (probably) wipe out your hard drive. On Win8, restoring can keep your data, but will delete installed programs.

 

[carepackage]

You cannot restore your laptop and keep your programs. If this is pre-Win8 laptop, restoring will (probably) wipe out your hard drive. On Win8, restoring can keep your data, but will delete installed programs.

Sorry I didn't make it clear, I got the laptop maybe 2 years ago and it came with 8 installed. So can I create some sort of backup to make reinstalling programs easier than copying down a long list and manually downloading every single one? Seems like a huge hassle and I'm not even sure if it'll improve performance in the long run.

 

[Alabalcho]

You cannot do that. I don't know of any utility (commercial or free) which can "backup" installed state of a program, and return it afterwards.

The whole purpose of "clean install" is to start with clean sheet, removing clutter which has accumulated over the years. May be you don't need that fancy screensaver you installed and forgot about last year, or may be there is a browser extension which slows you down but you don't know about it.