All that disk reading you see after your startup programs have finishing loading is Vista's Superfetch. It can be turned off in the registry, but that's not recommended.
Explore the features: SuperFetch
Another thing to keep in mind with a wired connection is your computer won't have to deal with the encryption overhead used for secure wireless connections. I wouldn't know how much of a frame rate increase that would equate to when playing online games.
CMOS ram is nothing more than battery backed up static ram that's usually contained in the clock chip. The BIOS is stored in a EPROM. The CMOS ram does nothing but store variable data used by the computer.
It may be already too late. If the docs are on the same drive as the OS they are good as gone. If the files are on another drive that hasn't had any write activity the your in luck.