Snow Leopard Reinstall

So I recently discovered that I need to install a few apps for school that are only windows based. I had Fusion a few months ago but I was less than impressed and chose to delete it and the partition. I have been able to get by with my windows based desktop until now. I need my early '08 style MBP to do research in the lab and I must have windows.

I tried to install 32-bit XP on a small partition (20 gb) using bootcamp but I got the error "...some files cannot be moved." It recommended I reinstall Snow Leopard and try again. I did some research and discovered I could use Idefrag and possibly resolve the situation but I am also wondering if I could use a good reinstall of my OS. I have always run the disk utility and onyx at least biweekly.

I have a few questions regarding a reinstall of Snow Leopard and I have found mixed answers so I was hoping some of you could shed some light.

1) Will i actually gain anything from a reinstall of os x?
2) Do I use the Leopard disk to reformat, or the snow leopard disk?
3) Will a full backup using time machine require me to reinstall my apps once i do reinstall OS X? I have iLife 09, iWork 09, and some other apps for school downloaded via the web.
4) If I restore using the full backup from time machine will I get the same error message when trying to install XP via bootcamp?

Specs:
10.6.2 snow leopard
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 gigs ddr2 ram

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Alex

Question before you reinstall SL.

Did you delete the 20Gb partition bootcamp created during the XP setup screen and re-format it or did you just format the partition.

To successfully install Windows using the Bootcamp utility you must delete the partition and format the free space for windows to install properly.

no it never created it. It said some of the files couldn't be moved so it never finished.

Try repairing permissions in Disk Utility first, and try Boot Camp again. May just be a permissions issue.

This is a common problem with Boot Camp, at least from what I've seen. I only wanted a small partition, so I was able to solve the problem by looking in Onyx and deleting some large files (after backing them up on an external) and putting my sleep mode to 0. I also used Disk Utility to partition the HD to a smaller value and then resize (it doesn't delete anything; just make sure you don't try to create a new partition -- resize the one you already have). Then, I was able to successfully create a bootcamp partition and install XP.

That being said, I don't know if using Disk Utility to resize has some type of minimal defragging ability that allows bootcamp to work. The resizing failed in bootcamp before I deleted larger files. I don't know if this will help at all.

Many others with the same program had to use iDefrag or do a complete reinstall. Neither is a particularly good first option, as iDefrag will cost you and a reinstall is just a hassle.

If you do decide to reinstall, do not rely on Time Machine. Hopefully you have an external HD. If you can, create a new partition so that you can make a bootable mirror of your existing HD. You can use Super Duper to do this. Be absolutely sure that everything is backed up before doing a full reinstall.