I don't have a flash drive, I do however have linux on my ipod mini which I use as a flash drive but never tried it with ubuntu and its not to hand. Old skool you seemed to of followed what I am saying but I think jayce may have the opposite idea to what I want to do. I have looked in synaptic a couple of times for a helpful tool and default programs are marked but that is a LONG list of packages to read through. I just want to get all the rubbish off and keep my personal settings. I reinstall ubuntu as this will 1) wipe the settings 2) the disk drive on this comp is broken.