Then what you should be doing is working from a master image. IOW an image of a full installation with Windows and all your apps. Whenever you feel you need to do one of these dump and rebuild cycles, you just reimage your working hard drive from the master. When you install a new program, either do it on both drives or just on the master and then reimage the working disk from the master.
Thanks. I should have thought of that - we use to do it when we tested software at my last job. I never think of backing up or preparing until after I’ve gotten a virus.